iPhone 17 Pro Max And iPhone Air Hit By Strange Camera Glitch, Fix Coming Soon Says Apple

The iPhone 17 lineup and iPhone Air models will be hitting the stores this Friday. While reviewers have praised the improvements of this new generation, one of the testers discovered a rather weird camera glitch affecting their iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro Max review units.

CNN Underscored's Henry Casey noted a glitch in some photos taken with the iPhone Air and the iPhone 17 Pro Max at a concert. Certain images had small blacked-out portions in the large LED screen behind the band. While we know Apple has been trying to address flares or small light dots in iPhone photos when capturing a direct source of light, this is an all-new camera glitch.

Fortunately, in CNN's review, Apple already said it's aware of the issue and a fix is coming. According to an Apple spokesperson, this is "something that can happen in very rare cases when an LED light display is extremely bright and shining directly into the camera. Apple has identified a fix and will be releasing it in an upcoming software update."

With the devices reaching store shelves this Friday, it's possible that the company will release iOS 26.0.1 as soon as today if it's focusing on the new iPhone models only. If it's a broader update to all iPhone models running iOS 26, it can take a few weeks. If we take last year's example, Apple took a couple of weeks to seed the iOS 18.0.1 update that fixed bugs from the initial build.

What's more interesting about last year's update is that M4 iPad Pro users were only able to update to iPadOS 18 when Apple released iPadOS 18.0.1, since the initial update bricked some iPads. That said, it's unclear how concerned the company is about this issue, as it's only affecting photos in very specific conditions. While iOS 26 users have been complaining about Liquid Glass and some general bugs, we'll likely see Apple tweaking the experience over the coming weeks and months.