iPhone 14 pixels: Why the 48MP sensor is not the big camera news this year - 9to5Mac

Because while the headline news is that the latest Pro models offer a 48MP sensor instead of a 12MP one, that’s not actually the most important improvement Apple has made to this year’s camera.

Colloquially, we talk about the iPhone camera in the singular, and then reference three different lenses: main, wide, and telephoto.

We do that because it’s familiar – that’s how DLSRs and mirrorless cameras work, one sensor, multiple (interchangeable) lenses – and because that’s the illusion Apple creates in the camera app, for simplicity.

Each camera module is separate, and each has its own sensor.

Only the main camera module has a 48MP sensor; the other two modules still have 12MP ones.

For the first time ever, the Pro lineup features a new 48MP Main camera with a quad-pixel sensor that adapts to the photo being captured, and features second-generation sensor-shift optical image stabilization. .

Even when you are using the main camera, with its 48MP sensor, you are still only shooting 12MP photos by default.

Apple’s approach makes sense, because, in truth, there are very few occasions when shooting in 48MP is better than shooting in 12MP.

While there are obvious and less obvious limits to the sensor size you can use in a smartphone, Apple has historically used larger sensors than other smartphone brands – which is part of the reason the iPhone was long seen as the go-to phone for camera quality.

This is why Apple has stuck religiously to 12MP, while brands like Samsung have crammed as many as 108MP into the same size sensor.

Ok, I took a while to get there, but I can now, finally, say why I think the larger sensor, pixel-binning, and the Photonic Engine are a far bigger deal than the 48MP sensor ….

This year, the main camera sensor in the iPhone 14 Pro/Max is 65% larger than the one in last year’s model.

Which is exactly why you’ll mostly still be shooting 12MP images.

To shoot 12MP images on the main camera, Apple uses a pixel-binning technique.

This means that the data from four pixels is converted into one virtual pixel (averaging the values), so the 48MP sensor is mostly being used as a larger 12MP one.

The iPhone 14 Pro/Max, when using the sensor in 12MP mode, effectively has pixels measuring 2.44 microns.

A dramatically bigger sensor (in smartphone terms) is a really big deal when it comes to image quality

Pixel-binning means that Apple has effectively created a much larger 12MP sensor for most photos, allowing the benefits of the larger sensor to be realized

More to follow in an iPhone 14 Diary piece, when I put the camera to a more extensive test over the next few days