New iPhone 17 Centre Stage camera is brilliant – and not for the reasons you think

Last night, at its launch event in California, Apple debuted a wide array of new products. As has become the norm for the brand, that showcased new devices across the breadth of its portfolio.

Still, the iPhone 17 range made up the bulk of the time spent on stage. Those devices employ a range of new features, but there's one in particular which caught my eye.

The brand unveiled a new front-facing camera called the Centre Stage camera. That offers a range of different features which are really useful for those taking selfies, such as the ability to change between vertical and horizontal orientation without losing resolution or moving your hand.

It does that by utilising a square sensor – and that's the part I think is peppered with genius. It's actually something I've been crying out for for a while, though I'd been suggesting it for proper mirrorless cameras instead of phones.

Some older medium format film cameras also use a square format, and that was in part for the same purpose. You could crop the image vertically or horizontally in post, without facing a dramatic drop-off in resolution, while also not having to worry about tilting the camera for different orientations.

Seeing that introduced on the iPhone 17 last night just felt right. Users will no longer have to contort their hands to get different crops – simply point and shoot, and the rest will be done internally.

I certainly hope there's a possibility to capture the full sensor image, to enable greater cropping potential in post, too. That would make it a seriously capable option for still shots, and would make it a dream for putting the same image in a range of different places, and in different aspect ratios.

We'll have to wait and see what the device is capable of once we get one in hand, but I certainly hope this isn't the last example of a square sensor we get to see.