What Makes The iPhone 15 Camera Better?
- 8 months ago
When it comes to the iPhone, camera specifications seldom convey the whole story. This year's iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro announcements further demonstrate how tightly Apple integrates hardware and software to take and create photos. All models now have a resolution of 48 megapixels, but Apple's Photonic Engine and Deep Fusion technologies are working extra hard to improve image quality and offer new camera functions with the help of a new CPU in the pro models.
48MP on all iPhone 15 models
Even those of us who have been using iPhones to take pictures since they first came out were pleased when the camera system finally broke out of the 12MP box last year because Apple is aware that users are conditioned to respond to greater megapixel numbers. It was only possible with the iPhone 14 Pro, the Camera app had to be in Raw capture mode, and there was a noticeable lag between photos while the camera took the picture, processed it, and saved the image.
As is customary, the number "48MP" on a smartphone camera is a strong indicator that the sensor is equipped with a quad bayer color filter array, which is built such that groups of four pixels can be merged to produce photos with a resolution of 12MP. Another option is to read each pixel separately, but this requires more work to try to interpret the data in a way that is similar to what a 48MP sensor with a traditional color arrangement would have captured. Images produced at full resolution could be a little less detailed than the pixel count shows because this method isn't ideal
48MP on all iPhone 15 models
Even those of us who have been using iPhones to take pictures since they first came out were pleased when the camera system finally broke out of the 12MP box last year because Apple is aware that users are conditioned to respond to greater megapixel numbers. It was only possible with the iPhone 14 Pro, the Camera app had to be in Raw capture mode, and there was a noticeable lag between photos while the camera took the picture, processed it, and saved the image.
As is customary, the number "48MP" on a smartphone camera is a strong indicator that the sensor is equipped with a quad bayer color filter array, which is built such that groups of four pixels can be merged to produce photos with a resolution of 12MP. Another option is to read each pixel separately, but this requires more work to try to interpret the data in a way that is similar to what a 48MP sensor with a traditional color arrangement would have captured. Images produced at full resolution could be a little less detailed than the pixel count shows because this method isn't ideal