Better Cameras
You can pretty much bank on the fact that each year’s iPhone release will bring noticeable camera improvements. After all, it’s been Apple’s state mission since at least 2016 to make the iPhone not just the best smartphone on the planet, but also the best camera too.
While we heard a slightly crazy report last spring that the new iPhone could gain a four-camera system, with the main shooter getting a bump to 64MP, and the telephoto and ultra-wide going to 40MP, we took that with a grain of salt even back then — something that even the original leaker recommended — and recent reports have suggested that we’ll see more modest, iterative improvements.
This would be keeping in line with what Apple has already been doing each year. The iPhone 11 saw the biggest camera bump (pun only slightly intended) that we’ve seen in years when it moved to a dual-camera system for the iPhone 11 and a triple-lens system for the iPhone 11 Pro. The iPhone 12 kept the same basic camera systems across the lineup, while adding better lenses and wider apertures, and giving the iPhone 12 Pro a new LiDAR Scanner that dramatically improved autofocus speeds and low-light photography. For the first time in Apple’s modern iPhone lineup, the larger iPhone 12 Pro Max also gained even more camera improvements over its smaller sibling.
So, it’s safe to say that we can expect the same sort of thing from this year’s iPhone, with the most notable change being a massive improvement to the Ultra-Wide camera, taking it up to a much wider aperture, six-element lens, and autofocus, all of which would bring it more in line with the other cameras — which will also undoubtedly see their own improvements in image quality.
Of course, in these days of machine learning and computational photography, there’s a lot more to the iPhone camera system than just the actual imaging hardware — Apple’s A14 chip brought some significant new improvements on its own last year, and it’s safe to say we can expect the same from the A15 that will undoubtedly form the core of this year’s iPhone.