Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Rumor has it that the 17 Pro Max has a Super Utra Wide Camera+:

There are even some leaked selfie shots:

309_ImageWall5_768px-60.jpg
 
no amount of 48 MP sensors can change the fact that their CCD and lenses are tiny comparing to a proper DLSR. Need great lighting to take good photos. Anything dimmer? It just got much worse.
The one time I saw a blurry mess of a photo taken by iPhone 12 Pro Max, I knew what iPhone camera was truly capable of. Another 48 MP sensor won't dramatically improve mid-to-low-light performance anyhow.
 
Yea I think you're right that the marketing focus will be on spatial video. Really hope this focus doesn't take away from just giving us the best camera sensors possible.

I would love them to have the same sensor but the cost would be about $500 more expensive. There is a big difference in cost from the large 48 sensor of the main sensor to the other sensors on the phone. I willing to bet the ultra wide will get the iPhone 15 (not Pro) 48MP sensor. It is slightly smaller and less expensive than the 48MP sensor on the 15 Pro.
Yep, this is the real reason for this upgrade: better spatial videos for the Vision Pro. I'm surprised the article didn't mention this. It's so obvious.

The ultra wide lens gets cropped in to match the view of the main lens, so it is working with a lot less resolution, being cropped down from 12MP currently. That's why spatial videos can't be shot in 4K now. This will unlock that capability.
 
no amount of 48 MP sensors can change the fact that their CCD and lenses are tiny comparing to a proper DLSR. Need great lighting to take good photos. Anything dimmer? It just got much worse.
The one time I saw a blurry mess of a photo taken by iPhone 12 Pro Max, I knew what iPhone camera was truly capable of. Another 48 MP sensor won't dramatically improve mid-to-low-light performance anyhow.
I'm still rocking my 5DMKII and L glass from 2008 if I want 'good' shots.
 
I wish there are options for realistic and artistic mode. In realistic mode the colors could match the reality as much as they could be. And in the artistic mode they could make the photo as aesthetically pleasing as much as they want.
 
All three rear cameras should use the same 48 MP sensor.
Just because the shot requires using the wide or telephoto doesn’t mean the photo should have to be taken using an inferior 12 MP sensor.
Obviously the iPhone is now so mature adding new features each year gets harder and harder, probably why they are dragging this out. Wide to get 48MP this year and then the telephoto to also get 48MP for the iPhone 17?
That’s what multiple rumours are pointing at, yeah
 
More MP doesn't mean better light capability. It's almost like no one understands photography anymore. It would have been better had they gone with a 24 MP sensor the same size as the 48 with bigger pixels. That would have garnered better low light capability. That and a better f/ stop.

But noooo no one thinks outside of MOAR MERGAPERXALS....
true for still photography cameras, with interchangeable lenses. But smartphones redefine that space as the lenses cannot reach the quality of dedicated cameras, so they are going another way to appeal all those who don't want dedicated cameras (for whatever reason) ... keep in mind, the best camera is the one that you have with you ...
 
  • Like
Reactions: ZZ9pluralZalpha
Increasing the size of the sensor improves low light performance. Dividing a sensor into more pixels increases the noise in each pixel, resulting worse low light performance. Pixel binning improves low light performance by reducing the number of effective pixels, but not as much as actually reducing the number of of pixels by making each pixel larger.

A sensor with one huge pixel would have the best low light performance, but resolution would be horrible.
 
Tim Cook’s Apple at its finest… drip feeding tiny improvements every year to have something to talk about

Time to retire couldn’t come faster for him
Company uses marketing and want to earn money. Furthermore you are forced to buy a new one every single year.
How dare they?
 
This is one area where my Pixel 8 Pro beats the iPhone 15 Pro. It has a larger sensor for the ultra-wide. In lower light photos, the corners of the ultra-wide Pixel image are much clearer than on the iPhone, which smears away much of the fine details (the corners of ultra-wide lenses/sensors receive quite a bit less light than the center. The corners are significantly boosted in brightness in software). But even with the worse ultra-wide hardware, the iPhone does better at video captured with its ultra-wide.


The Pixel has 48 or 50 mp sensors for all three lenses, but while it can capture significantly more detail in 50 mp mode on the 1x/wide camera than the 12 mp mode, I find that the higher 48 mp mode on the ultra-wide and telephoto lenses isn't really much of an improvement over the 12 MP mode. I'm not sure that a 4k mode for the iPhone 16 Pro Spatial Video mode would capture significantly more detail.

For those of you calling for the same sensor to be used for all three lenses, I doubt it's as easily done as said. It's very possible that they can't physically fit a lens that can provide an image that would cover the size of a larger sensor.
 
Last edited:
The telephoto camera also needs a better sensor, especially on the 5x. I don't want to say the photos are bad, but they're different... from good.

I'd be willing to bet the biggest selling point of this will be Spatial Videos in 4K resolution, and almost no one is going to care. But an upgrade to the Ultra Wide photos is a bonus, so I won't complain.
It’s possible the image quality there is already limited by the optics. Among the (now nearly extinct) point-and-shoot cameras, periscope lens arrangements were often found to be inferior to telescoping ones.
 
I know, right? Why don’t they simply reinvent the iPhone every single year and give us something totally exciting that we’ve never seen before?
Come on! Everyone knows Apple does this on purpose.

They purposely gave the 15 USB 2 speeds, they introduced the 24MP shooting option for the 15/15P/15P/15PM and they can't do it in the 14 Pro and Pro Max because... ??

I love the iPhone and Apple products, but no one can deny that since Tim Cook took over, they have been innovating at a really slow pace, plus, they have stupid software limitations that no one understands. Maybe Androids don't have the RAW performance of Apple Bionic and Silicon but at least they use the hardware at its full potential and are delivering more innovation and No I am not talking about Samsung.
 
Yes all sensors on the back should be 48MP but honestly it makes so much more sense to cram 48MP into the telephoto first because it would significantly help with digital zoom beyond the optical limit. The 5x photos from the 15PM look good but you can tell it's a low res sensor because of all the Apple oil painting processing. I've seen some native 5x 15PM shots that look like digital crops.
 
Yea I think as someone else said in the comments, upgrading the ultra wide is more about 4K spatial video recording than anything else. They will need to market it hard to try and give people a reason to buy the Vision Pro.

Remember too that 48MP doesn't mean a better image. If they still use a small sensor to keep costs down and add 48MP instead of 12MP, low light (especially true for telephoto lens) suffers greatly. If they did use the same high end 48MP sensor on the main camera for the telephoto and ultra wide, they would probably charge $1500 for it. It sucks to wait but there are reasons other than just a trickle down to give people reasons to upgrade every year; that is part of it though, I'm sure.
The sensor size (or pixel count) is rather unimportant. The quantum efficiency (probability of a photon creating a charge carrier pair) does not vary significantly between sensors. The important thing is the number of photons striking the sensor.

That number depends on the physical aperture of the lens. A bigger lens gives better performance. A bigger lens is, unfortunately, bigger. Larger diameter requires more space and due to practical engineering reasons makes the objective lens longer, i.e., thicker.

So, replacing the sensor with one with more pixels, larger area, or just with a someone better one does not help.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jensend
Company uses marketing and want to earn money. Furthermore you are forced to buy a new one every single year.
How dare they?
Being smart Alec are you? Apple was about innovation, then marketing, then money… where is innovation now? You call annual upgrade of each sensor (4 in total) innovation?
 
Being smart Alec are you? Apple was about innovation, then marketing, then money… where is innovation now? You call annual upgrade of each sensor (4 in total) innovation?
Absolutely not. But where do we see substantial annual upgrades, in which sector in terms of consumer electronics?
The phones under Steve weren’t such crazy upgrades year for year as well.
Smartphones are nearly „finished“ the way they are.
We can talk about new ideas from Apple, do foldables etc.

Nevertheless don’t see the point of these forced yearly upgrades. Buy a new phone bi-yearly and it’s all fine. When there is something that attracts you so much, you’re free to upgrade earlier.
 
Last edited:
It’s possible the image quality there is already limited by the optics. Among the (now nearly extinct) point-and-shoot cameras, periscope lens arrangements were often found to be inferior to telescoping ones.

Honestly, if that is the case, then Apple should just release an actual compact digital camera line running iOS. Samsung did it years ago and people weren't really ready for it - we were still on 2G wifi and 3G cellular, and people wanted small phones back then, but there are definitely people that would buy it if the photos were good since we're all much more used to larger phones now.
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot 2023-11-21 at 3.08.19 pm.png
    Screenshot 2023-11-21 at 3.08.19 pm.png
    1.3 MB · Views: 43
  • Screenshot 2023-11-21 at 3.08.29 pm.png
    Screenshot 2023-11-21 at 3.08.29 pm.png
    1.7 MB · Views: 53
  • Like
Reactions: ZZ9pluralZalpha
Looks like yearly camera improvements that are significant will be happening for the next 2 to 3 years.
 
Can't wait!
I'd love using the ultrawide more, but the photos and videos are so much worse than the main camera.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.