An upcoming iPhone 14 lineup launching in 2022 isn’t getting a pericope lens for the main wide camera after all. That upgrade is reportedly destined for a 2023 iPhone.
HIGHLIGHTS
- An iPhone with a periscope-style camera is apparently launching in 2023
- Older rumors mentioned iPhone 14 would get a periscope lens in 2022
- Periscope lenses bend the light 90 degrees to achieve
When will the iPhone camera get a periscope lens?
Reliable TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said in his reports issued in January 2021 and April 2021 that he didn’t expect significant upgrades for the iPhone’s lens systems until 2023 when he said he expected Apple to launch an iPhone with a periscope lens.
Kuo’s latest research notes seen by 9to5Mac, MacRumors and AppleInsider regurgitates his recent reports calling for a 48-megapixel camera upgrade for the iPhone 14 family in 2022. Assuming the information is correct, that would represent a four times increase over the 12-megapixel sensor in the iPhone 13 family. The same upgraded sensor in the iPhone 14 devices should allow for 8K video recording, up from 4K currently.
It should be underscored that the user probably won’t be getting all those pixels all the time due to something called pixel binning, which is a computational photography technique designed to boost color accuracy and improve low light performance.
With pixel binning, data provided by four discrete pixels on the camera sensor is then merged to generate each individual pixel of the final low-light image. But if lighting conditions are good, then the user should indeed get a 48-megapixel image (at least that’s how Samsung’s Galaxy S21 camera operates).
What is a periscope lens?
As seen on Oppo and some other Android handsets like Samsung’s Galaxy S20 Ultra, a periscope camera takes advantage of prisms and mirrors which are used to redirect light.
The solution would result in a much longer focal length along the long dimension of the iPhone rather than being limited to just front-to-back. For the user, this would mean much deeper optical zoom than the current iPhones allow.
Apple holds multiple patents on related foldable lens designs.
A separate report by Kuo back in July 202 said a periscope camera could also appear in certain Macs but he wouldn’t provide any specifics so take that tidbit with a grain of salt.
An even older one issued in March 2020Â was first to call for a periscope camera in 2022’s iPhone 14. But The latest research note from Kuo mentions an iPhone with a periscope lens as launching in 2023. But which one of those reports should you trust?
Well, go with the latest one we’d say. Kuo has excellent sources in Apple’s supply chain. If the supply chain is now saying that Apple’s plans for a periscope lens have changed, this is what we’re going to work with until new information becomes available.