iOS 17 details leak, don’t expect many visual changes, just a focus on stability and efficiency

Apple’s just pushed out iOS 16.3, the latest version of iOS 16, which itself was introduced back in June of last year and released in the fall with the iPhone 14 family. This year, iOS 17 will be released along with the iPhone 15 series, most likely in September, and today a new report is already talking about it.

According to this source, who has been reliable on occasion in the past when it comes to Apple-related things, iOS 17 will not introduce any huge visual overhauls. In fact, you should pretty much expect it to look identical to iOS 16. Instead, the focus with the upcoming release will be on increasing stability and efficiency, and supporting Apple’s Reality Pro AR/VR headset.

To that end, iOS 17 will feature a new, dedicated app for the headset. This will allegedly be a similar concept to the Watch app, but with “significantly more features”. The Home app seems like it’s in for a revamp, with “major changes” afoot, along with more minor-sounding “tweaks” to Find My.

Additionally, the Music app will reportedly see some changes having to do with navigation within it. The Mail app will be simplified “a bit”, and Reminders and Files will be improved, though we aren’t told how. Apparently, you should also expect minor changes to the Fitness and Wallet apps, the latter of which might be connected to Apple Pay Later.

It looks like iOS 17 is built to run on six devices with a Dynamic Island, of which two are the already available iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. So it seems like all four upcoming iPhone 15 models will feature the Dynamic Island, finally abandoning the notch.

According to other parts of the iOS 17 code, all four upcoming iPhones will have a USB-C port, but only two will support USB 3.2 speeds, presumably the Pro and Pro Max. The non-Pro handsets will be stuck with speeds similar to what they currently get through Lightning.

Finally, the iPhone 15 Pro Max is said to come with “more advanced” image processing software compared to the iPhone 15 Pro, and a better cooling system (which is probably made possible, at least in part, by the phone being physically bigger).