A few years ago, all iPhones had cameras with 12-megapixel sensors. Now, they all have one 48-megapixel sensor and either one or two with 12 megapixels. But a new report claims the iPhone 16 Pro Max will see a new main sensor and hugely upgraded Ultra Wide camera.
Updated on May 26. This post was first published on May 23, 2024.
As reported by MacRumors, Weibo user OvO Baby Sauce OvO has claimed that the main camera will replace the existing sensor with another one, also with 48-megapixel resolution. Specifically, this will be the Sony IMX903. That’s an upgrade which will only apply to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, the leaker claims.
While all the iPhones released this year will doubtless have great cameras, it looks like the iPhone 15 Pro Max will be, as Daniel John at Creative Bloq puts it, “the one to get excited about.”
The main sensor on the smaller iPhone 16 Pro will stick with the Sony IMX803 that is on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
But there’s another change which will apply to both sizes of Pro iPhone, and that’s the Ultra Wide camera which, it’s predicted, will leap from 12 megapixels to 48 megapixels.
As always with phone cameras, the intended benefit is mostly to improve performance in low light, where smaller sensors with smaller pixels usually struggle.
And as Creative Bloq points out, there are other changes on their way, affecting all three cameras on the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, as well as both of the snappers on the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus. This change is to the lenses themselves, which are being redesigned “to reduce lens flare by incorporating new anti-reflective optical coating technology on the lenses.”
A higher-resolution sensor will likely have smaller pixels still, but will almost certainly use the pixel binning process, where multiple pixel sites are combined to work as one, to draw in more light. Specifically on a 48-megapixel camera, four adjacent sites are linked, providing the equivalent of a 12-megapixel shot but with the bigger pixels the binning provides.
It’s a process that works brilliantly on the current iPhone series on the main camera, and additionally offers extra flexibility because there’s also the option to shoot in full 48-megapixel resolution for the highest quality—when the lighting situation allows.
That means it’s only the telephoto camera which isn’t changing this year, for the iPhone 16 Pro Max, with its 12-megapixel sensor and 5x optical zoom equivalent. However, there have also been rumors that the iPhone 16 Pro will see an improvement compared to this year’s model.
The iPhone 15 Pro only manages a 3x zoom because, I’m told, there just wasn’t room for the Max’s 5x zoom to fit in. That will change, it seems, this fall and both sizes of Pro will have the same excellent 5x zoom currently on the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Actually, there’s a possibility that the Pro Max will see a better telephoto this fall as well. As Creative Bloq points out, the iPhone 16 Pro Max might feature a “super” telephoto zoom which would take the focal length from 77mm to 300mm, which is much longer, obviously. The report says, “Increased zoom capabilities could be a huge boon for creatives, making the device a valid contender for sports or even nature photography.”
