Images claiming to be of an iPhone 17 Pro chassis show that Apple is switching back from titanium to a mixture of aluminum and glass.
In late 2024, duelling leakers were insisting that Apple was abandoning titanium in favor of aluminum for the iPhone 17 Pro — or was not. Now a new leak from yeux1122 claims to show that chassis — and it is aluminum.
“Apple iPhone 17 Pro model milling aluminum body chassis has leaked,” wrote yeux1122 on Chinese social media site Weibo (in translation). “The camera bump area shown by many renderings was confirmed to be a whole aluminum structure, not glass.”
Purported iPhone 17 Pro chassis. It’s not know what the arrows indicate, but they may be pointing to areas that will be glass — image credit: yeux1122
That last comment refers to how the leaked images show the camera bump being an exuded part of the aluminum. For the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, the camera bump is part of an all-glass back panel.
The images also appear to show that Apple has dropped that separate back glass panel. Instead, the aluminum frame seems to go all around the iPhone, with cutout areas for the lenses in the camera bump, and also a large circular one for MagSafe.
Assuming the leak is accurate, this would mean that Apple switched to using titanium for the iPhone for just two years. That’s despite Apple pushing titanium as a major selling point of the iPhone 15 Pro, and Tim Cook going to lengths to promote its different colors.
Note that yeux1122 has only a slightly better than average track record for accurate Apple leaks. He or she, did recently show what appears to be an iPhone 17 Air battery, but also said the iPhone 16 Pro would include a 2TB storage option.