Apple promises fix for 'very rare' camera glitch on the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air

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· TechRadar

News By David Nield published 18 September 2025

The iPhone Air comes with a single rear camera (Image credit: Future)

  • A weird iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro glitch has been reported
  • White squiggles and black blocks appear on certain photos
  • Apple says this is a rare occurrence, and a fix is already on the way

It seems the launch of the iPhone Air and the iPhone 17 Pro haven't gone quite as smoothly as Apple would hope: the cameras on these phones are glitching in a weird way in certain scenarios, though a fix is on the way.

The problem was pointed out by Henry Casey at CNN (via MacRumors), who noticed blacked out sections and white squiggles on some photos taken during a concert. Apparently this affected around 1 in 10 of the snaps taken by Casey.

As per an Apple spokesperson, this "can happen in very rare cases when an LED light display is extremely bright and shining directly into the camera". Apple says it's identified a fix for the issue, which will show up in an "upcoming software update".

It's not clear if this problem is affecting the iPhone 17 and the iPhone 17 Pro Max as well, which launched at the same time, though it's not something the TechRadar team has noticed while reviewing any of the new iPhones. We've asked Apple for further comment and will update this story if we hear back.

A first-day fix?

The rear camera on the iPhone 17 Pro (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)

These iPhones aren't going on sale or being shipped to customers until tomorrow, September 19, so there may well be a camera troubleshooting update available to download as soon as these devices have been unboxed.

Apple hasn't said what's causing the rare glitch, though there's some speculation in the MacRumors forums that these oddities could be caused through the way the iPhones are taking multiple exposures and combining them into one.

That's now standard practice on smartphones of course, and means the best parts of each snap can be combined to produce a balanced, natural, single photo. It seems that here, some of that instant image processing has gone awry.

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