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iPhone 17 Pro Apple's implementation of 120Hz in their phones still kind of sucks

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no0nefamous

macrumors 6502
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120Hz on Apple's flagship phones is still lacking. It was disappointing on the 13 Pro where it premiered and it's still disappointing on the 17 Pro.

For starters, I know Variable Refresh Rate is used to extend battery life, but it is very obviously overly aggressive. I constantly see it drop to 60Hz for a moment, often when you first unlock the screen and launch an app. If anything, it seems way more aggressive on the 17 Pro than the 13 Pro. Any time the screen is on and recently touched it should shoot straight to 120Hz immediately. Also, the difference in battery life 120Hz makes vs. 60Hz is overall negligible anyway.

If you feel that you can't tell the difference between 60Hz and 120Hz on your phone, try enabling Low Power Mode or "Limit Framerate" in the Accessibility options to see the phone force the refresh rate to 60Hz. The difference should be obvious, and once you can spot the difference, you'll have an easier time knowing when your screen's refresh rate dips.

So many third party apps are still locked at 60 FPS, sometimes even 30 FPS. Why? Isn't the whole point of the App Store app review process so Apple can enforce quality standards? I'm not talking about random no-name apps either, but big ones that everyone uses.

Safari comes, by default, with an option in Feature Flags that limits the visuals in Safari to 60 FPS. WHY WOULD THIS BE ON BY DEFAULT?

Why does it seem like Apple actively restricts the 120Hz that we paid for? If this is all because of people complaining about battery life, then give those of us who want performance over battery life the option for best visuals all the time.
 
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I know this is one of those polarizing topics, but >to me< I see very little difference between 60Hz and 120Hz. I got a 15 Pro when it came out and gave my wife my old 12 Pro... and then a few months later she said she wanted a better camera... so rather than buying her a new phone, we just traded. I went back to my 12 Pro. And never really noticed the difference.

I did end up upgrading to a 15 Pro Max just last year, for the 5x zoom. So today I tried your trick of enabling "Low Power Mode" and... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Safari works fine, apps open and close fine... it's just not a problem.

If I put my phone on Low Power Mode and set it next to my wife's (now) 17 Pro, not on Low Power Mode. Scrolling around in Safari, yeah... I can see "A difference." Of course I can't actually READ text on either one while rapidly scrolling, so it's more of a "Distinction without a difference" but yes, I do see it when they're side-by-side.

I have no idea where you or I land on the "Bell curve" - maybe we're each at opposite edges, maybe one of us is more in the middle - no idea. I guess the long & short of it is - if it bothers you, you have my sympathy and certainly feel free to complain to Apple about it.
 
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FreakinEurekan said:
I know this is one of those polarizing topics, but >to me< I see very little difference between 60Hz and 120Hz. I got a 15 Pro when it came out and gave my wife my old 12 Pro... and then a few months later she said she wanted a better camera... so rather than buying her a new phone, we just traded. I went back to my 12 Pro. And never really noticed the difference.

I did end up upgrading to a 15 Pro Max just last year, for the 5x zoom. So today I tried your trick of enabling "Low Power Mode" and... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Safari works fine, apps open and close fine... it's just not a problem.

If I put my phone on Low Power Mode and set it next to my wife's (now) 17 Pro, not on Low Power Mode. Scrolling around in Safari, yeah... I can see "A difference." Of course I can't actually READ text on either one while rapidly scrolling, so it's more of a "Distinction without a difference" but yes, I do see it when they're side-by-side.

I have no idea where you or I land on the "Bell curve" - maybe we're each at opposite edges, maybe one of us is more in the middle - no idea. I guess the long & short of it is - if it bothers you, you have my sympathy and certainly feel free to complain to Apple about it.
Click to expand...

Well, just in case - you can't use Safari to compare "as is" because, for whatever reason, Apple locks it at 60 FPS by default. You can disable it deep in the Safari App settings. The best thing to compare would be swiping through the OS UI itself.

I know some people are not bothered by framerates/refresh rates. I know I am on the high end of the bell curve in caring about them. It wouldn't be an issue if we didn't literally pay more for 120Hz. I guess maybe not this round because everything but the 17e has 120Hz, but still. Prior to this year, only the Pro models had 120Hz. But honestly, that makes it even more weird that so many apps are still locked at 60 FPS.
 
Yeah I see it swiping back & forth between apps, and opening/closing apps too. Maybe a "little" of it is the faster processor in the 17 Pro but probably most of it is refresh rate. But it's like the jelly scroll on my iPad mini 7 - I can see it if I look for it, but day-to-day it just isn't a factor.
 
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no0nefamous said:
Safari comes, by default, with an option in Feature Flags that limits the visuals in Safari to 60 FPS. WHY WOULD THIS BE ON BY DEFAULT?
Click to expand...
I get your other arguments, and I agree with you, but the Safari feature is implemented to save battery life because many websites are already poorly optimized, doubling the refresh rate will just make things even worse.
no0nefamous said:
For starters, I know Variable Refresh Rate is used to extend battery life, but it is very obviously overly aggressive.
Click to expand...
You're right, coming from desktop ("gaming") monitors where VRR is basically the norm and has basically no downsides, it's unfortunate that the iPhone's display seems to have such a "crude" implementation.
 
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Apple should absolutely add an option like “Prefer high Frame Rate” because comparing with Android their default implementation is definitely less smooth. Regarding that flag on Safari however, I think it applies only to the media you are playing through it. Videos are usually 50fps at most, so it can actually make sense to not render content itself at 120hz with the page being static (no scrolling or input)

I think they are reluctant to mess with it because many average Joes would not appreciate the improvements while any decrease in battery life is much more sensitive to the public. Adding this as an option though would mean that everyone is happy and power users can have the phone as smooth as recent flagship Android. Which seems like a no brainer moving forward.
 
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!!! said:
I get your other arguments, and I agree with you, but the Safari feature is implemented to save battery life because many websites are already poorly optimized, doubling the refresh rate will just make things even worse.

You're right, coming from desktop ("gaming") monitors where VRR is basically the norm and has basically no downsides, it's unfortunate that the iPhone's display seems to have such a "crude" implementation.
Click to expand...

I guess that makes sense. A poorly optimized website could unnecessarily "hold" the VRR at 120Hz if not limited even if there's no movement on screen, or... something like that?

SmOgER said:
Apple should absolutely add an option like “Prefer high Frame Rate” because comparing with Android their default implementation is definitely less smooth. Regarding that flag on Safari however, I think it applies only to the media you are playing through it. Videos are usually 50fps at most, so it can actually make sense to not render content itself at 120hz with the page being static (no scrolling or input)

I think they are reluctant to mess with it because many average Joes would not appreciate the improvements while any decrease in battery life is much more sensitive to the public. Adding this as an option though would mean that everyone is happy and power users can have the phone as smooth as recent flagship Android. Which seems like a no brainer moving forward.
Click to expand...

Yes, I would LOVE a "prefer high performance" mode for the phone overall. I almost always end the day with about 60% battery left and would absolutely choose high performance, given the option. I can understand not turning it on by default, but the option should be there. By default, we are kind of forced into a balanced performance mode.
 
no0nefamous said:
Well, just in case - you can't use Safari to compare "as is" because, for whatever reason, Apple locks it at 60 FPS by default. You can disable it deep in the Safari App settings. The best thing to compare would be swiping through the OS UI itself.

I know some people are not bothered by framerates/refresh rates. I know I am on the high end of the bell curve in caring about them. It wouldn't be an issue if we didn't literally pay more for 120Hz. I guess maybe not this round because everything but the 17e has 120Hz, but still. Prior to this year, only the Pro models had 120Hz. But honestly, that makes it even more weird that so many apps are still locked at 60 FPS.
Click to expand...
On many ProMotion devices, scrolling is already handled at 120Hz by the system; this specific setting mostly affects the content inside the page (like a spinning loading icon or a sliding menu). The prefer rendering at 60fps, in my experience, can make scrolling juttery.
 
now i see it said:
Do again do: close your eyes when you scroll.
Click to expand...

Hey it worked!

HouseLannister said:
I want the opposite. Scrolling smoothness is overrated. Make the hz go even lower. Check out this laptop with 43 hours of wireless web browsing.

www.tomshardware.com

1Hz laptop display reportedly helps deliver outstanding 43-hour battery life on the XPS 14 during web browser use — beats the M5 MacBook Air by more than 28 hours in the same test

VRR makes a big difference in battery life in the right situation.
www.tomshardware.com www.tomshardware.com
Click to expand...

People obsessing so much over their battery life is why we get $1100 insanely powerful phones that have their performance and features stifled like this.

The number one solution to "battery life issues" is to turn off the constantly displaying battery percentage because all it does is make people obsess over it.
 
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no0nefamous said:
Hey it worked!



People obsessing so much over their battery life is why we get $1100 insanely powerful phones that have their performance and features stifled like this.

The number one solution to "battery life issues" is to turn off the constantly displaying battery percentage because all it does is make people obsess over it.
Click to expand...
Agreed, I personally enjoy great battery life on my 17 Pro Max, IMO it provides so much battery that I am happy to have 120Hz on, Auto Brightness on, AOD on, and Background App Refresh on.

If I need more battery due to for example having forgotten to charge it for an extended amount of time, I will switch it to Low Power Mode, but this happens so rarely.

On a recent holiday in another country, before our daily excursions I would charge it up, then use the phone for taking pics, videos and uploading to Instagram while we are out, never had to worry about battery life, when we got back to the resort in the later afternoon it would still be well over 50% with all that going on. It performed exactly as I expected it to while I enjoyed its full functionality, we are at that point now which is great.

Back in the days of Windows Mobile PPCs, early iPhones, early Androids and Symbian phones, I would have to turn features off and hated that, even as recently as the iPhone Xs Max days I would top it up on a powerbank regularly, the thinking back then was that if you want to fully utilise your flagship smartphone you would need to deal with fast battery drain, but these days this is not much of an issue unless something in the background goes completely rogue, which is quite rare.

I will happily take a bigger battery over a smaller one that needs to me to turn features off.
 
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I did not face problems on my 14 Pro, however it is quite bad on my iPhone Air & M5 iPad. iPad drops to 60hz and takes a restart to fix it. There should be energy / performance options.
 
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My main gripe with their implementation is, what it makes for me absolutely a ********, is that the transitions between the different frame rates are so choppy.when the framerate changes when the scrolling speed reaches a threshold there is often a small scrolling glitch. atm this is the most apparent in the albums view of photos for example. this ruins the pro Motion experience for me.

FFS Apple, just acknowledge that a variable refresh rate is above you and just use a constant frame rate. at the current state of your software quality I doubt you will ever be able to get this right.
 
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Frieg said:
My main gripe with their implementation is, what it makes for me absolutely a ********, is that the transitions between the different frame rates are so choppy.when the framerate changes when the scrolling speed reaches a threshold there is often a small scrolling glitch. atm this is the most apparent in the albums view of photos for example. this ruins the pro Motion experience for me.

FFS Apple, just acknowledge that a variable refresh rate is above you and just use a constant frame rate. at the current state of your software quality I doubt you will ever be able to get this right.
Click to expand...
Definitely something I've never experienced.
 
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When you don’t see it you are not sensitive to it 🙃
17 pro
Every single iOS 26 device I tried, and those were many 17 display models, show the same jitter.
It’s even more apparent in album list but can’t show for privacy reasons.
This jitter shows all over the system with varying severity

 
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"It doesn't bother me that my $1100 phone with top benchmarking stats can't do things like scroll text, images, and menus smoothly".

We need to get people to snap out of this mindset. The iPhone has had NINETEEN years of refinement and is a mature product. Basic stuff like this should be absolutely perfect on the newest flagship phones. I've said this in another thread, but an iPhone 17 Pro not being able to do nearly everything on the screen near absolute smooth perfection is like buying a top of the line gaming PC rig and finding it can't run Half-Life 2 smoothly for some reason.
 
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Could this potentially be a class action lawsuit thing? Apple is failing to deliver the fresh rate feature we are paying for by throttling it down too much? Maybe a lawyer type can chime in and get on this?
 
no0nefamous said:
Could this potentially be a class action lawsuit thing? Apple is failing to deliver the fresh rate feature we are paying for by throttling it down too much? Maybe a lawyer type can chime in and get on this?
Click to expand...
“ProMotion technology with adaptive refresh rates up to 120Hz”

Up to

If you can prove the phone is incapable of EVER hitting 120hz, you might have something.
 
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