A few years ago, all iPhones had cameras with 12-megapixel sensors. Now they all have one 48-megapixel sensor and one or two 12-megapixel ones. But a new report claims that the iPhone 16 Pro Max will have a new main sensor and a vastly improved Ultra Wide camera.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max cameras may be an upgrade over the current iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Updated May 26. This post was first published on May 23, 2024.
As reported by MacRumors, Weibo user OvO Baby Sauce OvO claims that the main camera will replace the existing sensor with another one, also with a 48-megapixel resolution. Specifically, it will be the Sony IMX903. It’s an upgrade that will only apply to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, the source claims.
While all the iPhones released this year will no doubt have great cameras, it looks like the iPhone 15 Pro Max will be, as Creative Bloq’s Daniel John says, “the one you’re going to be excited about.”
The main sensor on the smaller iPhone 16 Pro will stick to the Sony IMX803 found on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
But there’s one more change that will apply to both Pro iPhone sizes, and that’s the Ultra Wide camera, which is predicted to jump from 12 megapixels to 48 megapixels.
As always with phone cameras, the expected benefit is mostly to improve low-light performance, where smaller sensors with smaller pixels typically struggle.
And as Creative Bloq points out, there are other changes coming that affect all three cameras on the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, as well as both cameras on the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus. This change refers to the lenses themselves, which are being redesigned “to reduce glare by incorporating new anti-reflective optical coating technology on the lenses.”
A higher resolution sensor will likely still have smaller pixels, but will almost certainly use the pixel binning process, where multiple pixel sites combine to work as one to capture more light. Specifically, with a 48-megapixel camera, four adjacent sites are linked, providing the equivalent of a 12-megapixel photo, but with the larger pixels that grouping provides.
It’s a process that works brilliantly on the current iPhone series of main camera, and it also 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.
This means that only the telephoto camera remains unchanged this year for the iPhone 16 Pro Max, with its 12-megapixel sensor and the equivalent of 5x optical zoom. However, there are also rumors that the iPhone 16 Pro will have an improvement over this year’s model.
The iPhone 15 Pro only manages 3x zoom because, I’m told, there simply wasn’t room for the Max’s 5x zoom to fit. That’s set to change, it seems, this fall, and both Pro sizes will have the same excellent 5x zoom currently on the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
In fact, there’s a chance the Pro Max will see a better telephoto this fall. As Creative Bloq points out, the iPhone 16 Pro Max could feature a “super” telephoto zoom that will 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.”
