Even with the iPhone 16 launch just around the corner, rumors are already swirling about next year’s releases. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggests the iPhone 17 Pro Max will sport a trio of 48-megapixel cameras, including a beefed-up telephoto lens, a big leap from the current 12-megapixel setup.
Apple kicked off its megapixel upgrade with iPhone 14 Pro in 2023, bumping the main sensor to 48MP while keeping the other lenses at 12MP. The following year, iPhone 15 Pro Max stuck with just the one 48MP camera. This year, it’s widely expected that the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s wide angle camera will get the 48MP treatment. That leaves the telephoto camera and its fancy 5x tetraprism zoom stuck with 12MP for now.
But if you’re excited for a time when all three rear cameras sport 48MP lenses, you could be in luck as soon as 2025. iPhone 17 Pro Max is expected to boost all three cameras, leaving 12MP lenses behind for good.
This upgrade means sharper photos and better zoom, especially for those lovely Portrait shots. The benefit of these huge resolutions is threefold: you can shoot in standard 48MP mode if you’re planning to print the resulting images at very large scale; you can use Apple’s fancy image processing to grab 48MP worth of detail and merge it down to a more manageable 12MP file; or you can use the high resolution to act as an extra zoom function by cropping down to a 12MP frame within a wider shot.
Plus, with the potential for 4K HDR spatial video capture, your recordings will look stunning on the Vision Pro headset, which Apple hopes more of us will have by Fall 2025.
One thing to keep in mind: those 48-megapixel photos and videos will eat up a lot more storage. Here’s hoping Apple boosts the default storage on the iPhone 17 Pro Max to keep up with these massive files, especially if it wants users to go all-in on spatial video.