New Leak Suggests Startling Change
Apple puts its logo on the back of the iPhone, but you know that, and you can almost certainly call to mind exactly where it sits even without looking. If the latest leak is right, it’s on the move.
Apple iPhone 16 Pro: will the Apple logo move on the iPhone 17 Pro?
The logo has sat in the same place since the iPhone 11 saw it move a little south compared to the position on the iPhone Xs and earlier. There was a good technical reason for the move: the wireless charging ring required precise placement to work, and the logo was moved to sit in the center, to provide a visual assist.
A year later, with iPhone 12, this became clearer still with the introduction of MagSafe, with a ring of magnets in the phone and in MagSafe cases, to show exactly where to plonk the phone.
Now, according to serial tipster Majin Bu, it will move further down on the iPhone 17 Pro. The report shows images of what it will look like and while there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with it being a bit lower, I find it surprising.
Not from an aesthetic point of view, but because the report suggests that the MagSafe ring won’t be moving, meaning that the Apple logo will no longer sit centrally in the magnets.
This seems counter-intuitive to me, and will, Majin Bu says, have a knock-on effect in terms of the MagSafe imagery that appears, for example, on a transparent case with MagSafe magnets. Instead of the Apple logo sitting dead-center in the circle, the suggestion is that a partial circle will be deployed, so as not to bang into the logo.
The report shows an image of this and (may I be frank?) it looks terrible. I’m not alone in this. Michael Burkhardt at 9to5Mac uses the word “bizarrely” to describe Majin Bu’s comments about the cases, though he also points out there is precedent to the claim.
“Frankly, I’m not sure whether or not I believe this. It could make sense with the entire top of the phone now being a single camera bar, but at the same time it’s incredibly odd. That said, the centered logo placement of iPhone 11 also leaked through case manufacturers having to design around it, so there’s a bit of precedent to the leak,” Burkhardt says.
My gut tells me that the lower logo will correspond with a repositioned MagSafe coil. As time passes, more case manufacturers will need to make decisions about this, so more leaks may emerge.