The iPhone 16 series is due to arrive next September and it’s already beginning to shape up. There have already been several rumors, such as a new capacitive button, not to mention leaks of the dimensions and weights for next year’s models. Now, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from TFI Securities has claimed that the key upgrade of the current iPhone 15 Pro Max will be coming to both sizes of iPhone 16 Pro, the tetraprism camera.
The tetraprism, you’ll know, is the telephoto lens on the iPhone 15 Pro Max and it delivers a 5x optical zoom instead of the 3x zoom found on the smaller iPhone 15 Pro. It works by reflecting light rays four times inside the glass structure, something Apple says is unique. It works brilliantly, and it left iPhone 15 Pro customers feeling left out.
Kuo, in a post on Medium, wrote about Largan Precision, the designer and manufacturer of plastic aspherical lenses and optical components. Kuo said that the company’s revenue has been very high recently. Kuo said, “Largan’s September revenue reached NT$5.572 billion, marking a 46-month high thanks to the iPhone 15 Pro Max and Mate 60 Pro. This strong revenue momentum is expected to continue into 1Q24.”
That’s a sign of the importance of Apple to the market, that just one of its products could have an effect of this magnitude on another company—alongside the business Largan has gained from Huawei.
Kuo goes on to reveal that the iPhone 16 Pro will feature the same lens as the iPhone 16 Pro Max, by commenting, “Largan’s main growth drivers in 2024 will come from two iPhone 16 Pro models adopting tetraprism lenses, and the significant upgrade of Huawei’s high-end phone lens specifications.”
This is interesting. My understanding is that the reason Apple saved the tetraprism for the Max only is space—there just wasn’t room in the smaller Pro iPhone to squeeze in the larger camera alongside all the other internal components. This is not a focal length issue: the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max have the same 0.32-inch (8.25 mm) thickness, so it seems likely it would have displaced another element.
Apple has solved this for next year, it seems, and found a way to fit the tetraprism into the smaller model. Which poses more questions. Will this take space away from the battery? Has Apple found room by filling in the area that sits where the SIM tray used to be in the U.S. models (and is still found in other countries)? These are early days, so more details may emerge.
In the meantime, the prospect of an iPhone 16 Pro with a camera as powerful as on the iPhone 16 Pro Max will please those with smaller hands.
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