Apple’s iPhones have a reputation for having great cameras. For large parts of their history, in fact, they were up there with the best. It started with the iPhone 4 in 2010 (cameras on the original, 3G and 3GS felt more like an afterthought). We already dealt with it in a flashback, so we are not going that far back today. Instead, we will look at the last 10 generations of iPhone starting with the iPhone 5 in 2012.
If you look at the graphs below, you will see that there is not much progress on the resolution front. The iPhone 4 had a 5MP camera, the 4s went up to 8MP, which bit a bit and it has been 12MP ever since. These include the telephoto and ultra-wide cameras, which later started to appear. Nowadays, even the front camera is 12MP.
Of course, there are rumors that this is the year when Apple will finally adopt the high-resolution sensors that have taken over most Android cameras – allegedly 48MP for the Pro models, while the vanilla phones will probably stay at 12MP again. The 14 Series can also bring autofocus to the selfie camera (all leading cameras on iPhones have had fixed focus so far).
The Plus or Pro iPhones usually get the better camera hardware (especially the Pro Max)
Going back to the resolution for a moment, Apple A-Series disk drives are super powerful, but no iPhone has offered 8K video resolution so far. This is a limitation of the sensors, 12MP is not nearly enough pixels for it.
As for the division between the baseline model and the Plus / Pro models, it immediately said. The iPhone 6 series was the first generation to be divided into vanilla and Plus models and the Plus had optical image stabilization (OIS) while the vanilla did not. This has also remained the case for the 6s / 6s Plus generation.
Such features take a year or two after launch to reach the base phones. The iPhone 7, for example, was the first to have OIS. In 2020, Apple introduced sensor shift stabilization, which was exclusive to the iPhone 12 Pro Max. This technology was later adopted by all iPhone 13 models. Note, however, that the advantages have larger sensors and brighter aperture.
With that in mind, it’s not surprising that the rumored 48MP sensor will be exclusive to the Pro duo. In fact, this is the norm for Apple. The vanilla models have never offered a telephoto camera and this may not change this year either.