iPhone 17 Pro Users Baffled by Quiet Removal of Night Mode Portraits

Apple just quietly killed one of the iPhone’s best low-light features, and nobody knows why. As early adopters unbox their iPhone 17 Pros this week, they’re discovering a glaring omission that wasn't in the brochure: Night Mode Portraits are gone. The feature, a staple on the iPhone 16 Pro, has vanished without a trace in the final shipping software, meaning you can no longer snap those creamy, low-light portraits automatically.

The "Quiet" Removal

Making the Camera Worse in the Dark

This isn't just a UI tweak; it makes the camera objectively worse in the dark. Despite the iPhone 17 Pro rocking an upgraded all-48MP system and the shiny new A19 Pro chip, the requirements for taking a Portrait shot have actually gotten stricter. Apple updated its spec sheet on December 5 to note that Portrait mode now demands at least 1 lux of ambient light. For context, last year's iPhone 16 Pro could pull off similar shots in half that light (0.5 lux) thanks to its LiDAR-assisted Night Mode.

Puzzlement and Frustration

The silence from Apple is fueling the fire. The forums are lighting up with complaints, with Brandwatch tracking over 15,000 mentions of the missing feature in just the last 72 hours. The vibe isn't just confusion; it's annoyance. A Reddit poll from December 5 found that 68% of respondents are baffled by the decision to cut a feature that was basically a cheat code for good social media photos at night.

While a handful of purists are celebrating the move away from what they call "gimmicky" processing, the general consensus is that this feels like a downgrade. Marques Brownlee called the omission "baffling," pointing out that stripping features away degrades that out-of-the-box "Pro" feeling. Sure, third-party apps can fill the void, but you shouldn't need them on a flagship phone. As of December 7, Apple hasn't said a word about whether this is a permanent death or if the feature might resurrect in a future update.