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Here's what to expect from the iPhone's first periscope camera
- An analyst has revealed more apparent details regarding Apple’s upcoming periscope camera.
- The iPhone maker will reportedly use a 12MP 5x or 6x periscope shooter.
- It’s believed that the new camera will debut in 2023.
We heard rumors over a year ago that Apple is working to bring periscope cameras to its iPhone range, with suggestions that this tech could come to the iPhone 15 series in 2023. Now, a trusted source has shed more light on the hardware to expect.
Veteran Apple watcher and TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo published a post on Medium, looking at Apple’s camera supply chain for future iPhones. The analyst also added that a periscope camera will specifically come to Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max models.
So what will this camera be capable of? Well, Kuo asserts that Apple will adopt a 12MP (1/3-inch, f/2.8, sensor-shift stabilization) camera with 5x or 6x optical zoom. In other words, it won’t offer the same native zoom level as the Galaxy S22 Ultra‘s 10MP 10x periscope camera.
More Apple coverage: Everything we know about the iPhone 14 series so far
Nevertheless, phones like the Pixel 6 Pro have combined a 48MP 4x periscope camera with hybrid zoom techniques to deliver usable results all the way out to 10x or 20x. Even the Galaxy S22 Ultra uses hybrid zoom to offer decent images at 20x or 30x. So it stands to reason that Apple will take this hybrid approach for images past 5x or 6x.
This will be a long-overdue addition for the iPhone series though, as periscope cameras first debuted on the HUAWEI P30 Pro and OPPO Reno 10x Zoom Edition back in 2019.