The iPhone 17 is coming in just a few weeks, and rumors have been circulating all summer. Alongside the usual models like the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro models, Apple is also potentially bringing a slimmer phone to the party, as well as a new version of its FineWoven accessories. With all of that said, how many of the iPhone 17’s rumored features are actually new to the market?
It’s a tale that dates back well over a decade. Android phones have regularly beaten the iPhone to new features. I remember being a young tech blogger talking about how the iPhone 6 came with NFC, a feature that Android phones had included since the release of the Samsung Nexus S a few years earlier.
Since this theme has been present in the iOS versus Android debate for as long as most of us can remember, let’s review the rumored features of the iPhone 17 and see which ones have already been on the market as Android phones.
The iPhone 17 Air
One of the big rumors this year is that Apple will introduce a slimmer iPhone 17 alongside the rest of the lineup. Should the rumors pan out, the phone will be called the iPhone 17 Air, and it’ll be the thinnest iPhone that Apple has ever made. Leaked photos of the device show that it’s about as thin as its buttons, which is a turn from phones remaining thicker to accommodate larger batteries.
The thing is, Samsung already did this, and very recently. The Korean tech giant released the Galaxy S25 Edge earlier this year, which is essentially a Galaxy S25 but made as thin as possible. It is barely thicker than its own buttons as well, and when viewed side by side, the design is pretty similar all around. Score one for Android phones.
A wider camera bump
Another design change potentially coming is a camera bump that spans most of the width of the phone’s back. It’s part of several design changes that are rumored to happen, including the iPhone going back to an aluminum frame instead of a titanium frame (which, consequently, was a design borrowed by Samsung). This is backed up by case renders of the iPhone 17.
Credit: Zain bin Awais/Mashable
If you squint a little, you can see that this is something already found on the Google Pixel 9. In Apple’s defense, the Pixel’s version is more curved than rectangular, like the iPhone 17’s camera bump is rumored to be. However, the idea of it spanning most of the back of the device has been done by several Android phones in the past, with the Pixel 9 being the most recent example.
Vapor chamber cooling
Another rumor swirling around is that the iPhone 17 is finally upping its thermal game by introducing vapor chamber cooling. The premise is pretty simple and leverages the cooling benefits of liquids changing phases. Water heats up, evaporates, moves to the cooler end of the chamber, where it cools down, turns back into a liquid, and returns to gather more heat. It’s quite effective.
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Android phones have been using vapor chamber cooling for almost a decade. The Razer Phone 2 is largely considered the first phone to do it all the way back in 2018. Since then, Samsung and other OEMs have introduced the technology, and Samsung still uses it to this day. Interestingly, the Pixel 10 just introduced it as part of its lineup, so it beat Apple by a month.
120 Hz displays on every model
In prior years, Apple reserved its 120 Hz refresh rate ProMotion display for the iPhone Pro models. This year, it’s rumored that the entire lineup is finally getting high refresh rate displays, unifying the lineup, which includes the iPhone 17 Air model. It’ll be the first time that every iPhone in a generation has had the same refresh rate since the entire iPhone 12 lineup featured 60 Hz displays.
Android phones beat the iPhone to higher resolution displays by four years (2017’s Razer Phone versus 2021’s iPhone 13 Pro). However, Android OEMs have been stashing the tech in entire lineups since at least the Galaxy S20 series in 2020. Even Google does this with its lower-end Pixel phones, with the Pixel 9a housing a refresh rate of 120 Hz like its more expensive siblings.
12GB of RAM, finally
Apple received praise for upgrading the iPhone 16 to 8GB of RAM from the 6GB of RAM in the iPhone 15. Rumor has it that the iPhone 17 will come with a 50 percent bump to 12GB of RAM, making it the most ever in an iPhone. This is no doubt thanks to Apple Intelligence, which requires more hardware than most other stuff you do on a smartphone, so Apple is beefing up its specs to make sure all the iOS 26 AI features work correctly.
Android phones have had 12GB RAM or even more for quite some time. Samsung has been doing this for years, even offering 16GB of RAM in the Galaxy S21 Ultra before backing it down to 12GB on future models. Google and other phone makers have also done with the Pixel, sporting 12GB of RAM since last year’s Pixel 9, and some Chinese phones are ramping it up to 24GB or beyond.
A larger battery capacity
Modern iPhones have become much more competitive in terms of battery life. The iPhone 16 Pro Max came with the largest battery ever housed in an iPhone, at 4,685 mAh. One of the rumors for 2025’s iPhone 17 is that the Pro Max is being made slightly thicker to accommodate a battery that hits the 5,000 mAh barrier for the first time in iPhone history.
Here’s the thing: Android phone makers have been doing that for years now. The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra was among the first, released in 2020. Plenty of Android phones have met or exceeded 5,000 mAh in the years since. It’s nice to see Apple bringing its phones up to par with the competition, and we hope they keep doing so in this arena, so battery life gets longer.
A fully refreshed design with iOS 26
Credit: Zooey Liao; Apple
Apple is notoriously slow at overhauling iOS. The last time Cupertino had a major visual overhaul was when it released iOS 7 in 2013, which introduced a flatter, more modern design. While iOS 26 has its fans and detractors, there’s no doubt that it is bringing a very different look to the iPhone 17 and prior models that can support the updates.
Since 2013, Android has had a few major design overhauls, including Material Design (2014), Material You (2021), and Material 3 Expressive (2025). This doesn’t matter too much, since designs are very subjective in general, but Android fans have had a lot more fun with large new design elements over the last decade and some change than iOS users have.
Ultimately, it’s okay
Just because Android has beaten the iPhone to the punch doesn’t mean the iPhone 17 is going to be a bad phone. Apple’s optimizations are legendary, and we have no doubt that the iPhone 17 will be among the top smartphones released all year and into 2026. Even so, it’s good to know that Android phones still have a position in the market as being the first to have something. So, if you want a larger battery, more RAM, or phones that exceed 120 Hz refresh rates, you’ll need to shop for Android.
