The iPhone 17 and 17 Air may have 120Hz displays, but without the ProMotion features

We’ve been hearing for a while now that the whole iPhone 17 family will have 120Hz displays and everyone assumed this means ProMotion – but that may not be the case. To be fair, every display from Apple with higher than 60Hz refresh rate has been branded “ProMotion”, so it was a reasonable assumption.

However, there is more to ProMotion than just the top refresh rate frequency – it has a wide range of frequency options, ranging from 10Hz to 120Hz on the iPhone 13 Pro. The lower limit was dropped to 1Hz with the iPhone 14 Pro generation.

ProMotion on the iPhone 13 Pro

Some high refresh rate displays only offer a few options, e.g. 60Hz, 90Hz and 120Hz. Presumably, this will be the case for the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Air. Meanwhile, the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max should have LTPO panels that can save power on static content by going below 60Hz - this is especially useful in Always-On Display mode. AOD isn't available on non-Pro iPhones and it's not clear whether that will change with the 17-series.

LTPO isn’t that expensive these days and can even be found on some mid-rangers. Still, we’re just glad to see that Apple is ready to leave 60Hz displays in the past where they belong. That may not be entirely true - it’s not clear whether the iPhone 17e will be included in the 120Hz upgrade. Remember, the “e” phones will be yearly releases and a new one is coming in early 2026.

Source (in Chinese) | Via