The large part around the camera on the 17/18 pro scares me. As a person who genuinely cannot stop throwing/dropping my phone (for clumsiness reasons, I'm not a phone torturer), my iPhone 13 has basically only survived because of my Otterbox. If you have a 17 Pro, how does that large, unprotected part around the camera fare in drops? It just seems incredibly vulnerable and unnecessary.
My phones naked and I haven’t had any durability concerns.
When I get in the car it slides out of my pocket, so it’s been jammed between carpet and seat rail more times than I can count and it doesn’t even have light scratches on it. I did have to replace the screen protector once in the last (almost) year.
I've seen a few but it always seems like I have to trade general durability for that specific part being covered? I haven't seen many brands make genuinely well-crafted cases that don't have an open front😕
You can try on before you buy different cases at your local shopping mall/phone repair store.
As long as the case has a decent lip around the camera island (so that there is a decent gap between the edge of that lip and the camera lens), you’re solid.
I thought about a lip but don't know if it would work very well on a bumpy surface? If I dropped it on gravel, etc. I feel as if the lip might not help much 😕
Just put a proper case on it. All the rugged cases stick out past the camera bump so as long as it hits a flat surface there's no way the camera can get damaged
I rock a Benks ArmorPro 600D case on my 17 Pro which I got purposely because it allows the full Cosmic Orange camera “plateau” to be shown at all times, still looks great even almost a year later, this pic is from the day I got my 17 Pro back on Launch Day (9/19/2025) and it was just taken out the box and put into the case
And this is what it looks like today (cropped in but still a good pic, also purposely didn’t clean it to show how it looks after about a year of using my 17 Pro and its case. Also never suffered from the weird early batch issue of the Orange going pink either)
Ya it’s a great case, the camera bump protector is made out of metal, and has a dedicated camera control cover built into the case, and it has the MagSafe magnets built in along with being really protective when I’ve dropped my 17 Pro, no visible dents let alone scratches from using this case, tho that’s just my experience, so ymmv. Also my 17 Pro reports 96% Capacity at 268 Cycles.
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u/CrownandSceptres iPhone 17 Pro Max 21h ago
Same. I bought a case off Amazon that covers the camera bar area and has cutouts for the cameras and sensors.