Apple’s iPhone 17 family gets a surprising emphasis on the front camera, and the Android makers should take n. The phones feature an 18-megapixel selfie unit housing a square sensor to unleash the ability to capture orientation-agnostic shots, better framing and smoother video without the aid of clumsy workarounds. It’s a small hardware tweak with oversized implications for creators and video callers and for anyone who lives in Stories, Shorts or Reels.
In zoom reach, sensor size and software tricks, Android flagships run the table — but the selfie experience often feels tacked on at the last minute. The iPhone 17’s approach flips that script — and there’s legitimate potential for the Android world to respond.
Why a square selfie sensor makes a difference
By using a square sensor, with the iPhone held upright you can capture landscape or portrait footage and crop smartly to the intended aspect ratio later. That translates to fewer missed moments when you spun late, and far more legroom when repurposing that same clip across platforms.
The math is persuasive. 4,240x 4,240 pixels, on the compliment straight of about 50%. An 18 MP square is: 4,240 x 4,240 pixels. Crop down to 16:9 and you get something around 10MP; for 4:3, about 13.5MP which are also well beyond the 8.3MP necessary for 4K video, with room to spare for electronic stabilization. You throw away a few raw pixels compared to what you would get with the sensor’s entire square, but in return you get consistency and the freedom to compose creatively.
Android brands have toyed with strange aspect ratios in the past — consider the rotating sensor on the Moto One Action, or when you’d hold the phone upright for landscape video on some old Samsung phones. The iPhone 17? That’s the broader, less circus-tent evolution: a pliable capture canvas that plays to the vertical-first social media without locking you into a niche camera module.
Auto framing at native pace
Apple combines the wide field of view with its Center Stage-style tracking to keep your face centered as you shuffle around. This got its start on tablets with an ultra-wide camera; moving it to the front of the iPhone with a square sensor gives the algorithm more “overscan” area from which it can crop, making reframing appear smoother and less juddery.
Android has analogues (Samsung’s Auto Framing in the camera, and the subject framing feature in Google Meet are two examples), but implementation is inconsistent by brand/across third-party apps. A system-level, developer friendly API that provides these auto-framed, orientation-agnostic previews to any video app would get us a long way. The value added here by Apple isn’t the feature per se, it’s an expectation of how you expect it to behave across FaceTime, social apps, and third‑party services.
There’s demand. YouTube says that Shorts receives tens of billions of daily views and the Ericsson Mobility Report still references video as the majority of mobile data traffic. If people are spending their lives in vertical video and video calls, the front camera should be as deliberately designed as the rear array.
Steadier 4K/60 from the get-go
Apple’s “Ultra” stabilization for 4k 60fps on the selfie camera relies on that extra sensor area to smooth out camera shake without obliterating the detail. A lot of Android phones have cool stabilization tricks with the rear cameras, but front facing 4K/60 with aggressive stabilization tends not to be as reliable, either reducing resolution or cropping in rather severely.
A square sensor bakes in stabilization buffer. When your base frame is bigger than the output, the algorithms can jiggle the crop box back and forth to counteract shake, but keep the view wide — the perfect formula for vloggers and live streamers.
Dualpixel 65
Apple also allows you to record front and rear video simultaneously, a feature Android has had in various forms — “Bothie” on Nokia’s phones, “Director’s View” on Samsung, and dual-view modes on devices from Oppo and others. The difference is integration. If dual capture is surfaced in a consistent manner at the OS level and paired with strong audio routing and metadata, creators will be able to count on it across all apps, rather than diving into brand-specific modes.
For Android, expanding the role of CameraX and Camera2 with standardized dual-stream templates, sync’d timestamps and app-friendly controls could make a checkbox feature into a part of storytelling on mobile.
What Android manufacturers should do
Multi-aspect or square-leaning selfie sensors in the flagship Even if actual squares are few and far between, a, larger_wider front sensor with on-sensor phase detect autofocus and lots of overscan would deliver similar advantages. This is why DXOMARK’s testing has always rewarded AF and a wide FOV on the selfie side.
Enable orientation-agnostic capture as an overall switch in the stock camera, with an SDK/way for social apps to request the same feed. The victory is more than mere hardware novelty —- it is expected for both users and developers alike.
Ensure a front-camera 4K/60 with enhanced EIS, with a color science that is in sync with your rear cameras. Nothing kills immersion like switching lenses and getting a skin tone or white balance not tailored to the person who’s actually using the phone; Google’s Real Tone work is a great reference point, and everyone ought to aim at it on all their cameras, not just the selfie cam.
Ship these features across tiers. Camera quality has consistently been among the top purchase drivers, according to Counterpoint Research. Stabilized 4K selfies and reliable face tracking in midrange devices would probably be a bigger deal than yet another incrementally better telephoto.
Bottom line
The front camera of the iPhone 17 is less about megapixels and more about smart framing, flexible composition and creator-ready video. Android doesn’t have to follow the blueprint pixel for pixel, it just needs to chase the result: shoot proofs against the orientation, stabilized 4K/60 from the front, always-on dual capture, and the APIs to make it all universal. That’s one selfie playbook worth stealing.