The iPhone 17 Air may shift the selfie cam from the right to the left

Leaker Majin Bu has noticed something in looking at screen protectors for the iPhone 17 line.

The screen protector for the alleged iPhone 17 Air has its camera cutout shifted from the right side of the Face ID sensors to the left side. The obvious implication is that the usual front sensor layout—an oval cutout for TrueDepth sensors on the left and a round cutout for the front camera on the right—will be reversed in the iPhone 17 Air. The camera will be on the left with the TrueDepth sensors on the right. Screen protectors for the other models show the camera in the usual position.

It’s unclear why Apple is shifting the camera on only this phone, though it likely has something to do with internal engineering. In order to make a phone so thin, Apple will need to shift some components. Of course, the two cutouts on the front of modern iPhones are joined into a single “pill” shape by the Dynamic Island, and that should be nearly, if not exactly, the same size on all iPhone 17 models. A small shift to the camera position, still hidden in an identical Dynamic Island, won’t have any impact on users.

Over the years, the iPhone front camera has regularly shifted position. On the iPhones 4 and 5, the first iphone with a selfie camera, it was on the left, then moved to the center for the iPhone 6, 7, and 8. When Apple introduced Face ID and screen notch with the iPhone X, the camera was positioned on the left side, where it has remained since.

The change may speak to some new internal design considerations intended to help make the iPhone 17 Air thinner, however. That means we could see the same arrangement on future iPhones.