iPhone 16 Pro's Ultra Wide Camera Rumored to Receive Major Upgrade

[rymc02]

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?

Honestly asking, what would you consider innovation in a mature product line like the iPhone? It's 16 years old now. If you want bleeding edge technology in the iPhone are you willing to pay for it? Looking at a mature market like digital cameras, getting the latest tech like the global shutter in the Sony A1iii, you have to fork over $7k. That's 3x the average price of a full frame mirrorless.

It seems crazy to expect the same leaps in tech that we saw in the first 4-5 generations of iPhones at this point in the product life. The MacBook saw massive leaps in tech the first decade it was around but has drastically slowed in "innovation" in the last 15 or more years. Small iterations add up to big changes over the course of many years now.

If anything, it's kinda nice being able to have a 3-4 year old phone and not feel left out bc the newest phones are only marginally better. My wallet certainly appreciates it.

 

[OneBar]

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 ...

It's true for any photography or videography. More MP doesn't equal better light sensitivity. Larger sensors can, if they don't saturate it with pixels. The pixels have to have a modicum of isolation from one another to prevent light bleed and increase sensitivity. Generally that's accomplished by making the sensor and pixels larger but only moderately increasing the pixel count. If they'd increased the sensor to the current size but only gone up to 24 MP, they would have had better light sensitivity at the same f/ stop. Secondly, it's not the lens itself that determines the aperture; it's the aperture. The aperture size can affect the lens size but we're only talking diameter on the non-zoom systems. The lens itself only determines the zoom and FOV.

 

[The Game 161]

still don't know the ultra wide will be getting upgraded to 48mp before the telephoto. ultra wide seems to be the least used sensor on phones these days.

 

[Jensend]

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.

My Pixel 8 Pro has more advanced options in the Camera app than the Pixel 8, despite both sharing the same processor and primary camera.

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.

The watercolor look in the processing is evidence that the megapixel count is already too high, and that higher megapixel count wouldn't improve detail.

 

[zakarhino]

My Pixel 8 Pro has more advanced options in the Camera app than the Pixel 8, despite both sharing the same processor and primary camera.

The watercolor look in the processing is evidence that the megapixel count is already too high, and that higher megapixel count wouldn't improve detail.

Could you explain a little more what you mean by that? Because when I take 48MP photos there is significantly less watercolor effect than when I take a cropped image. Do you mean the lens quality would have to improve too? That would make sense but wouldn't a 48MP sensor on the telephoto mean better crops at 10x+?

 

[ZZ9pluralZalpha]

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.

My sense is a separate device would be a hard sell—even if it was a pure accessory the size of a swollen AirPods case, it’s still another thing to buy, grab, pack, charge, etc.—and an iPhone with a point-and-shoot lens and sensor would be truly agonizing to pocket, so we’re probably stuck living by “the best camera is the one you have with you [because it’s integrated into a corner of your phone]” for a while yet. Now, a CarPlay-esque arrangement that bolsters the transfer and post-processing capabilities of the existing lines from Canon, Sony, Nikon, et al.—that would be technically feasible and rather nice…

 

[ric22]

Wide and telephone are a bit, well, rubbish on the current iPhone Pro Max... hopefully they improve to match the main censor!

 

[Jensend]

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.

Are you sure they are actually native 5x and not crops from the wide camera? Because often smartphone cameras, including the iPhone, will take a cropped shot from the wide camera when you choose the telephoto option.

Could you explain a little more what you mean by that? Because when I take 48MP photos there is significantly less watercolor effect than when I take a cropped image. Do you mean the lens quality would have to improve too? That would make sense but wouldn't a 48MP sensor on the telephoto mean better crops at 10x+?

Well, I suppose there are two main reasons a 5x image taken with the 15PM can look soft: it's actually upscaled from the wide camera or there's a high amount of noise reduction*. And both of those are ultimately because the sensor can't/isn't gathering enough light. Adding more megapixels to the same sensor size won't help. And you can't just make the sensor bigger—the lens has to be bigger/longer/more complex to make a bigger imaging circle for the sensor to capture.

Sure, a 48MP telephoto will get more detailed images of something lit by direct sunlight, or if you're using a tripod. But if the image already looks soft at a 1:1 pixel ratio, more megapixels won't help.

Another thing to keep in mind is that a "10x" lens is 10 times as sensitive to camera shake as a "1x" lens, so you can only leave the shutter open for a tenth of the duration on the 10x camera to get an equivalent amount of unwanted motion blur.


*I tend to think that noise reduction is much too high by default, but lower noise reduction also means higher file sizes.

 

[karthik02]

One word : FINALLY !


I LOVE using the Ultra Wide Angle lens.
So that makes at least 1 person 😉

I did notice the quality has always been subpar though compared to the Wide Angle. The images are darker.

Here's one of my latest shots so you know I actually use it. I couldn't have done this shot with just the Wide Angle.

An alternative is to take a pano shot with the main camera