Previous reports have suggested that Apple is planning to fit a 200-megapixel camera to an iPhone in either 2027 or 2028.
While squeezing ever more pixels into the same size sensor would be bad news for low-light photography, the latest report has a couple of pieces of good news …
The 200MP camera reports
It was in May of last year that Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station (DCS) – a leaker with a decent track record – first suggested that Apple was working on a 200MP camera for a future iPhone. That would be a massive increase over the 48MP sensors used in the latest iPhone 17 Pro models.
Fast forward to January of this year and the report was backed by Morgan Stanley. The bank suggested then that the 200MP camera would be launched in a 2028 iPhone.
More megapixels aren’t always a good thing
The problem with squeezing ever more megapixels into a smartphone-sized sensor is that the pixel density increases. This means that more noise is introduced into photos, which can be especially visible in low-light shots.
This is the reason that Apple for a long time completely ignored the megapixel race and stuck firmly to 12MP while its rivals were launching smartphones with far higher pixel counts. IPhones were the best smartphone cameras around when it came to low-light photography.
That’s important because many of our most emotionally-important photos and videos are taken in low light conditions. Think birthday parties, restaurants, kids playing indoors, and so on. It’s only relatively recently that Apple bumped up the megapixels to 48MP.
Larger sensor
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