Selfie with iJustine and Tim Cook at 2025 Apple Event.
Jason Hiner/ZDNET
We always knew people took a lot of selfies, but when Apple unveiled its 2025 fall devices, it revealed that iPhone users had taken over 500 billion selfies in the past year. Since there are about 1.5 billion iPhone users in the world, that’s an average of about 330 selfies a year per person.
In this selfie taken on the iPhone 17, you can see the level of detail in the face, hat, and the texture on the wall. You can also see the dynamic range in the clouds in the sky.
Jason Hiner/ZDNET
No wonder Apple decided to reimagine how the front-facing camera works on the iPhone this year.
In the process, Apple also gave the selfie camera a big upgrade in image quality. For those of us who take a lot of selfies, this is welcome news because the front-facing camera has been the weakest link among the iPhone cameras for years. And as Apple’s data shows, it may be the most used camera on the phone for lots of folks.
Also: I’ve reviewed every iPhone 17 model, and my advice is something different this year
Apple gave all four phones in the iPhone 17 lineup the same upgrade to the selfie camera by taking it from a 12MP rectangular sensor to a 24MP square sensor that can take an 18MP image in either horizontal or vertical orientation.
In fact, one of the coolest things about the new front-facing camera is that as soon as you invoke it, a new button pops up called the Center Stage button and when you tap it then it switches your photo between vertical and horizontal modes without you have to flip the camera around. In other words, you can hold it whichever way is most comfortable for you — typically vertical for most people — and the software will do all the work.
Even better, you can click the Center Stage settings at the top of the window and turn on Auto Zoom and Auto Rotate. With that, the iPhone will now use AI to automatically identify all the people in your shot by putting boxes around their faces and then it will automatically switch between vertical and horizontal and wide and ultrawide to fit everyone in the shot.
The interface for the front-facing camera on the iPhone 17 models now lets you switch between vertical and horizontal (right arrow) and set the Center Stage to use AI automatically zoom or swap between vertical and horizontal to get everyone in your group selfie shot (left arrow).
Screenshot by Jason Hiner
While Apple uses “Center Stage” branding for its new selfie camera, it’s a lot more powerful than the Center Stage feature on Mac and iPad that simply keeps you in the center of the frame on video calls.
Also: I tested the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and here’s one big reason for a year-over-year upgrade
In fact, Apple’s new selfie camera in the iPhone 17 lineup is clearly the smartest selfie camera in the world. It’s so good that it’s tough to go back to using a static selfie camera on older iPhones and on Android phones. With that in mind, I would not be surprised to see Android phone makers adopt the square selfie sensor in their smartphones in 2026 and beyond.
Apple went from lagging other flagship smartphones – which have been using 24MP selfie cameras since as early as 2018 — to leapfrogging all of them in one generation of phones.
Here is the horizontal version of the selfie above, with all the same quality benefits of the new 18MP sensor. The only difference is that I hit the Center Stage button to switch to landscape mode.
Jason Hiner/ZDNET
I’ve been testing the new selfie cameras on the various models of the iPhone 17 lineup for the past several weeks and I’m happy to report that it works as well as advertised and the front sensor is now worthy of taking high-quality photos and not just quick images to post on social media.
