A long-awaited feature is finally expected to arrive in Apple’s flagship iPhone this year, but fans of smaller phones will have to wait considerably longer.
According to an earlier leak by industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and recently corroborated by a new report from South Korean site, The Elec, Apple will debut an all-new folded zoom, or ‘periscope’ lens later this year in the forthcoming iPhone 15 range.
Apple is expected to release a game-changing iPhone upgrade this year, but some will miss out.
Manufactured by LG Innotek and Jahwa Electronics, Apple’s new camera is expected to appear only in the larger ‘Pro Max’ model, tipped to launch in a rebranded form as ‘iPhone 15 Ultra.’
This leaves fans of the smaller iPhone Pro forced to either step up to the larger model or wait until 2024, when the camera is predicted to find its way into both the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max (Ultra) models, according to The Elec.
New lens will offer game-changing zoom
Apple’s folded zoom lens would offer the potential to dramatically improve the iPhone’s photo quality at higher magnifications, as has already been demonstrated in Android flagships such as Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra, which uses a periscopic lens design to deliver ‘optical zoom’ up to 10x. The iPhone 14 Pro/Pro Max is currently limited to 3x, leaving it far behind its arch-rival.
However, Apple’s lens will likely also deliver benefits at lower magnifications as it is tipped to feature a true optical zoom mechanism. Powered by a rolling ‘ball guide’ actuator, this moving mechanism allows internal lens components to be shifted smoothly and quickly, allowing the lens to physically zoom in and out. This reduces the reliance on quality-sapping digital image processing to merge the output of multiple fixed lenses.
Zoom performance has been an area where the iPhone needed to improve for a while. It remains to be seen just how much of a quality boost Apple will be able to achieve using the new technology, but this year could give us a unique opportunity to find out, as we’ll be able to compare the performance of the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Ultra directly.
Either way, this year is set to be a very interesting one in terms of smartphone camera releases, with Samsung’s radically different Galaxy S23 Ultra due to arrive in just a few days.
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