Next year’s iPhone 16 Pro range will be receiving a huge camera upgrade and much-improved connectivity, according to a new industry report.
Even before the arrival of the iPhone 15, we’re already seeing reports of a much-improved main camera for Apple’s 2024 flagship iPhones, and now our attention turns to the ultrawide shooter, which looks set to receive a massive increase in pixel resolution.
In a report seen by MacRumors, respected industry analyst Jeff Pu, of Haitong International Securities, predicts that the iPhone 16 Pro range will feature a new 48-megapixel ultrawide camera. That’s a huge increase in resolution from the 12-megapixel version currently found in the iPhone 14 Pro—and expected to remain in place for this year’s iPhone 15 Pro range.
This upgrade should allow the new camera to deliver much sharper 0.5x photos and video than either the iPhone 14 Pro or the iPhone 15 Pro, as well as better quality when zooming between 0.5x and 1x—a particular problem area singled out in Dxomark’s tests of the iPhone 14 Pro. That said, Dxomark’s top performer in the ultrawide test, the Huawei P60 Pro, does so using only a 13-megapixel sensor, so there are definitely other approaches that could be taken when improving ultrawide performance. However, Apple’s higher-resolution camera would also bring with it the exciting possibility of 48-megapixel ProRAW ultrawide shots for the first time.
Apple has been paying close attention to the ultrawide camera since the introduction of the iPhone 13 Pro, adding progressively larger sensors and adding important features such as autofocus, so my hope is for an even larger sensor in the iPhone 16 Pro series.
This is because an upgrade from 12 to 48 megapixels won’t, on its own, increase the light-gathering capacity of the ultrawide camera, which is one of the most important factors determining overall image quality. To make a really big impact, Apple would also have to do at least one of the following: increase the physical size of the sensor, switch to a newer sensor technology, or widen the aperture of the lens.
There’s already talk of new sensor technology being deployed in the iPhone 16 Pro’s main camera, so it’s possible that a similar upgrade could come to the ultrawide alongside any other improvements.
Also rumored for the iPhone 16 Pro is an upgrade to the Wi-Fi 7 standard, as tipped previously by analyst Minch-Chi Kuo, potentially offering over four times the speed of the WiFi 6E standard slated for the iPhone 15 Pro series.
For now, all eyes are on the forthcoming iPhone 15/Pro releases, which are expected to deliver many exciting upgrades of their own.
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