The optical zoom on the Pro is so good! I often zoom in 3-5x and still get great results. I've gotten comments from people saying they thought photos of far off building features, etc, were taken with a DSLR.
It's a no-brainer to get the Pro for this reason, if you care about photos.
Really thought they'd upgrade from 12MP to 48MP on the telephoto. iPhone 16 Pro matched the Pixel's 5x optical zoom, but weirdly it remains stuck at 12MP.
When it comes to exchangeable lens cameras (DSLRs/DSLMs), as you increase the number of pixels you very quickly reach a point where you're limited by the optical performance of the lens instead of the sensor. Lots of systems offer a choice between a 24MP and a high pixel count camera (e.g. Nikon Z6/Z7), and you'll find that the high pixel count sibling requires very good lenses to actually achieve a meaningful improvement over 24MP. For these cameras, common wisdom says to stay with 24MP apart from certain niche use cases.
In other words, I wouldn't expect a improvement in capturing actual 48MP pictures in phone cameras, apart perhaps from pixel binning to a smaller size and similar techniques.
Disclaimer: I haven't followed camera tech very closely recently, and I'm not an expert. Take my opinion with a grain of salt.
It might be a 48MP sensor that produces 12MP readout after pixel binning. That's how the sensors on the Sony Xperia 1 work. Does Apple use Sony sensors? I vaguely remember that being a thing.
If image sensor / lens system quality are orthogonal to the final megapixel output, why bother with 48MP output JPEGs? They take up more space, so the practical benefit to smaller files is there.
Is this a real zoom or just a fixed lens with longer focal length? I have read that the 13 Pro does digital zoom between 1x and 2.9x and only at 3x the 3x lens kicks in. So if you have a 5x lens you get digital zoom over an even longer range. So you may end up with worse image quality over a wider range.
That is correct. I treat my 15 Pro like having a set of prime lenses at varying lengths, and so only use 0.5x (13mm), 1x (24mm), 2x (48mm, which is 12MP out of the main camera’s 48MP), or 3x (77mm). In theory, anything between 1x and 2x should be non-digital zoom, but a crop of the 1x 48MP sensor. Anything between 0.5x and 1x, over 2x and less than 3x, or over 3x is digital zoom (crop + upscale). (For the 15 Pro Max, and I assume upcoming 16 Pro models, replace 3x with 5x)
As far as I know, Sony is the only company making phones with “actual” optical zoom, and not just a bunch of primes.
I'd hope it's just a "set of primes" with interpolation/digital zoom between them. At least I wouldn't want to have something that I drop on the floor on regular intervals to have a movable lens assembly that needs micrometer alignment because it's 48mp spread out over just a couple of mm.
The previous model 15 pro already has 3x, so it’s a jump from 3x to 5x. Not enough for me to upgrade already, but a good feature if you like photography or videography.
