It looks like we just got our first look at a real iPhone 17 Pro. In an incredibly unlikely encounter in Los Angeles, an X user by the name of Skyfops stumbled upon what must be an Apple employee testing an iPhone 17 Pro in one of Apple’s signature disguise cases. While there is some (very fair) skepticism surrounding this leak, I have heard that it is real.

Before I had even heard a peep, I was almost certain that it was legit. Apple is known to test devices closer to launch in public with cases designed to disguise new designs. We have known that there was going to be a new design for quite awhile now. Leaks have suggested the iPhone 17 Pro would adopt a new wide camera bar along the top with the flash and LiDAR sensor aligned to the right of the back of the phone. That is exactly how they appear in the photos from today’s encounter. Thankfully, the device was also captured from the side profile where you can see that it is nearly twice as thick as the iPhone 16 Pro in the tester’s other hand. This is to cover up the revamped protruding bar along the top of the phone so that it looks uniformly flat on the back. As I mentioned before, Apple has been known to do this going as far back as the iPhone 4.

In addition to the chunky case, you can also see in the second image that the device appears to have a privacy screen protector on it, while the iPhone 16 Pro does not. The person holding the two devices is clearly using the iPhone 16 Pro to test some sort of feature of the new model. The current generation phone in his left hand appears to show one of Apple’s internal testing tools. What they may be testing though is anyone’s guess.

To lend further credence to this leak, we’re less than two months out from Apple’s annual iPhone event. There are, without question, several Apple employees with this year’s iPhone models in hand already. For them to be out in the wild isn’t a surprise. But for one to be recognized, that’s huge. It hasn’t happened before. At least one has never been captured on camera. If this is all right, as I believe it to be, this joins the pantheon of the wildest iPhone leaks. It might just be right up there with the iPhone 4 in a bar, the iPhone X glyph from the HomePod, the iPhone Xs images published early, among others. That being said, the person testing the device appears to be doing exactly what they’re supposed to: test it in a real-world scenario. This isn’t about Apple being careless, it’s about one of these devices finally being seen by someone who knew what it was.