(Credit: Pitaka)
We’re currently living in a world where Apple didn't make a black iPhone 17 Pro, but iPhone case makers seem to think it did.
If you're browsing cases for Apple's latest high-end smartphone, which goes on sale on Friday, you might notice that several manufacturers are displaying their products on a non-existent device.
(Credit: Tyler Hayes)I did a web search for "iPhone 17 Pro case," and the first four out of six sponsored products showed a black iPhone 17 Pro. I clicked through to several online stores and found the same thing. And it's not just Aliexpress or Temu; all kinds of legit vendors tried to guess the new iPhone's color.
(Credit: Bellroy)
(Credit: Burga)The iPhone Air comes in space black, and the iPhone 17 comes in black, but the darkest shade available for the two iPhone 17 Pros is deep blue. (They also come in silver or cosmic orange.)
That’s one of the interesting things about this marketing mishap. Choosing to show off your phone case on top of a black iPhone probably seemed like the safest thing you could do. Black is a smartphone mainstay. Apple even once put out two black iPhones in the same year: Black and Jet Black. (The Jet Black one was amazing, by the way.)
The companies showing off their cases with a lighter white or silvery iPhone 17 Pro in product shots mostly dodged any embarrassment, as those are harder to distinguish from Apple’s actual silver color. The early iPhone rumors were on the right track about the colors that were coming, but no one really knew. If they did, more companies would have used the "cosmic orange" color to differentiate their new cases. Instead, the true winners might be the ones who played it straight and didn’t put any fake phones in their product shots.
(Credit: Nomad)More than any real harm done here, I’m slightly worried that this marketing blunder is the literal start of a Mandela Effect. People like me will have seen these images and be wildly confused in a few years when they can’t find the black iPhone 17 Pro on Apple’s website. Hopefully, this will serve as a distinct reminder that the black iPhone 17 Pro was, in fact, just a fever dream.