Massive Camera Upgrade Makes iPhone 15 a Mobile Photography Game-Changer

While most people expected massive camera updates to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, which they got, people also expected the camera system on the standard iPhone 15 to be a remix of the iPhone 14 Pro series. That didn’t happen. Apple has actually introduced an all-new 48-megapixel sensor this year for both models. Sure, this sensor is slightly smaller than the sensor on the iPhone 15 Pro models, but it does things differently. This is what makes this a huge camera update for the standard iPhone.

1. Apple has changed its pixel binning technique. Instead of binning down from 48 megapixels to 12 megapixels, for the first time the iPhone by default is shooting photos at a higher resolution. In this case, it shoots at 24 megapixels. Apple wouldn’t have made this change without having massive confidence in the new sensor. Apple is also allowing shooting at 48 megapixels.

2. This gets a 26mm focal length and an f/1.6 aperture which is wider than that of the iPhone 14 Pro Max. This means it also has very impressive capabilities in low light situations. Apple has shown off tremendous improvements to portrait mode in low light and even night mode. These could only be possible with such a wide aperture coupled with the focal length.

3. Apple’s updates to its core software technologies like the Photonic Engine and Smart HDR are huge. These updates also come in the context of this being just the second time Apple is using pixel binning with a 48-megapixel sensor. Apple’s computational photography pipeline is looking excellent based on the photos shown off. This will also improve the front camera even though no hardware changes have happened.

4. Portrait mode has improved. This could be the biggest update to portrait mode since the iPhone 12. Apple touts zero shutter lag and now all the depth information is captured by default whilst even shooting a normal photo so the user can change the shot to portrait and alter the depth and focus points from the Photos app. It also detects animals better, edge detection has improved and night time portraits are better.

5. The 48-megapixel resolution also allows Apple to crop the images to 12-megapixels, providing optical quality of a 2x zoom without having to add an additional camera. And like we witnessed in the iPhone 14 Pro models last year, the cropped 2x was better, especially in low light than the 3x telephoto zoom because it even gained the advantage of the sensor shift stabilisation system and all of Apple’s software pipeline improvements.

Make no mistake, this is a pretty big improvement to the core iPhone camera hardware and software.