Apple’s forthcoming iPhone refresh — presumably an ‘iPhone 6s’ and ‘iPhone 6s Plus’ — is set for a major upgrade in the camera department as Apple has reportedly relented and decided to join the megapixel race with a twelve-megapixel iSight camera on the back of the new phone(s).
But the megapixels don’t tell the whole story.
According to Kevin Wang, IHS’s Technology Research Director for China, the pixel size will be smaller, raising questions about the camera’ performance in low-light conditions.
Wang has reportedly “confirmed” the twelve-megapixel iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus camera. Although smaller pixels would represent a step back from the large pixels on current iPhone cameras, Apple may employ several tricks to improve the next iPhone’s low-light performance, such as a more advanced image processing pipeline, a larger aperture and sensor size and more.
One source recently predicted that the next iPhone will have a dual-lens camera out the back with optical zoom rather than digital one, potentially enabling additional imaging improvements.
For years, Apple’s been using eight-megapixel cameras on iPhones since the introduction of the iPhone 4s back in the fall of 2011.
Rather than join the megapixel race, Apple has opted to improve imaging capabilities of iPhones by introducing better lens, more advanced image signal processors, larger pixels and a number of software features which have improved image quality considerably.
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo recently predicted a switch to a twelve-megapixel sensor on the next iPhone, in addition to a faster A9 chip with 2GB of higher-clocked LPDDR4 RAM, a new rose gold color option and more.
Source: IHS via G for Games