The latest rumors revolving around the iPhone 17 lineup that Apple is expected to unveil tomorrow (September 9) at its big Awe Dropping event potentially reveal every single detail for all four new handsets, from the iPhone 17 to the iPhone 17 Pro Max and that ultra-slim iPhone 17 Air. However, no one rumored spec has me as jazzed as the upgraded telephoto cameras on the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max.
According to the latest reports – and yes, I take all of these rumors with a grain of salt – both flagship Pro models will feature 48MP, 8x optical telephoto cameras.
This is a big deal. First, it brings the next iPhone 17 Pro Max one big step closer (and even surpassing in one way) to its nearest rival, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, which already has a 50MP 5X optical zoom periscope camera.
It’s also just a massive upgrade from the 12MP 5X optical zoom on the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Also, if true, it answers, for me at least, a very big question about the Pro line design: why so big a camera hump? As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, at least if you’ve been paying attention to all the leaks, the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max both feature full-width camera bumps.
Apple is apparently not filling that space with a half dozen cameras, but one can assume that it is using the extra space underneath for a couple of purposes: one might be a bigger battery, but the other is possibly to bring enhanced periscope technology to the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max.
A preiscope lens is exactly what it sounds like: the light is sent through the lens to a prism where it bends at a 90-degree angle to travel further to the sensor and thereby helping to increase the telephoto length. Perhaps, to achieve this surprising 8X optical zoom, Apple needed a bit more space for the periscope technology than what’s possible with the current 5x zoom-supporting iteration
While I’ve used 10x optical zoom with just 10MP on the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, I don’t think I’ve ever had this combo before: a rich 48MP sensor and 8X optical zoom.
The iPhone zoom detail I want
If this is real, it’s quite likely that I will use the 8X optical zoom’s 48MP sensor in a default binned mode, meaning that it will shoot at 12MP and use 4pixels of information for each final pixel. I’m okay with that because the resulting pictures should be incredible.
After all, when I was shooting 10x optical zoom with a 10MP sensor on the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, I noticed that at full size or zoomed in a bit, the images did not hold up that well. The level of detail was too low. The detail here promises to be much, much better.
Apple’s potential plan could bring a significant amount of additional information to these high-zoom images. If Apple does even more work on its computational image processing engine, especially in the areas of exposure and speed, I envision some exciting moon and wildlife shots in my future.
People wonder why I’m obsessed with optical zoom. Part of it has to do with my background in photography. I’ve been using DSLR and big zoom lenses for decades. Nothing beats optical zoom and a big sensor. But every year, smartphone companies get closer to at least approaching some of those capabilities, and one of the chief ways to do it is to raise their own optical zoom lens capabilities. The limiting factor has always been the size of these phones. There’s virtually no distance between the lens and the sensor: hence the periscope.
And please don’t be fooled by Samsung Space Zoom or Google’s recent “100x AI Zoom”. In both cases, the ultra-smart AI-capable CPUs are recreating what optical zoomed images might look like. They are not producing photographs, just images.
As I see it, the only downside to Apple’s potential zoom upgrade is the design changes, but for that kind of photographic capability, I’m willing to accept the slightly uglier look and potentially start shooting the best iPhone photos ever.