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The iPhone 17 Pro’s rumored price hike could be softened by a much-needed storage upgrade
- A leaker claims the iPhone 17 Pro will see a $50 price hike
- That might be accompanied by a storage increase to 256GB
- The iPhone 17 Pro is just weeks away from launching
Apple’s iPhones aren’t known for being cheap, and you’ll certainly pay a premium if you want to buy one. Unfortunately, there are hints that we could see a price hike when the iPhone 17 Pro launches in a month’s time, but it might come with an upgrade that somewhat softens the blow.
The idea of the price rise was recently discussed by leaker Instant Digital on the Chinese social media site Weibo. There, Instant Digital said with some certainty that the iPhone 17 Pro would be $50 more expensive than the current iPhone 16 Pro, pushing its price to $1,049.
It isn’t yet clear if this rumored price increase will be global or solely in the US. The source also didn’t mention whether the price of the entry-level iPhone 17 would also shift northwards, but it’s an idea that has been reported separately by the Wall Street Journal.
If correct, it’s a disappointing development, although not exactly an unexpected one. US President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs have increased operating costs for almost every business affected by them, and in many cases that is being passed on to the consumer. Combined with rising component costs, the $50 increase doesn’t entirely come out of the blue.
Still, Instant Digital touched on the topic of whether the iPhone 17 Pro might upgrade its base storage from 128GB to 256GB, although they said that they were uncertain of whether the storage bump would actually materialize. If it does happen, it could be a sensible way for Apple to justify the $50 price rise and make it feel a little more palatable.
On-device or online storage?
The best iPhones offer some market-leading features, but one area where they’ve fallen behind their rivals is internal storage. The iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, and iPhone 16 Pro all start with 128GB of storage, whereas many rival phones offer more in their base-level offerings. The iPhone 16 Pro Max starts with 256GB of storage, but it’s also the most expensive phone in Apple’s lineup.
If the $1,049 iPhone 17 Pro also comes with 256GB of storage as standard, it could effectively be seen as offering a $50 price cut compared to the 256GB iPhone 16 Pro, which currently costs $1,099. That said, users might not be happy at having to pay another $50 on top of the iPhone’s starting price, especially if they don’t feel they’ll use that extra storage.
I’m not too worried about buying a 128GB iPhone – I did just that when I bought my iPhone 16 Pro – as I’ve never come close to running out of space, partly because I use 200GB of Apple’s iCloud storage to house my iPhone photos.
That costs me $2.99 a month, and I’d have to keep my iPhone for 34 months before my phone plus iCloud subscription becomes more expensive than just buying a 256GB iPhone up front – and it still gives me more total space than a 256GB phone would. By the time those 34 months are up, I may well have decided to upgrade to a newer iPhone, making a 128GB iPhone and iCloud storage combination a good deal in my eyes.
But it’s not for everyone, and many users will prefer a more capacious iPhone to dealing with a 128GB phone and an iCloud subscription. For those people, the iPhone 17 Pro might bring good news, if the larger base storage prediction turns out to be accurate. We’ll know for sure when Apple unveils its new devices to the world this September.
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