With some supply shortages cutting back the feature this year, next year could see the introduction of an important bit of camera censor technology in all iPhone cameras.
While the Apple iPhone 15 seems setup to be a mighty impressive phone, Apple already has big plans for next year, according to an industry reporter.
Though this won’t affect this year’s supply, it gives an idea of what next year’s iPhones will look like.
Getting the full picture
A report by Ming-Chi Kuo, a well known Apple reporter and predictor, claims that all versions of the iPhone 16 will adopt a stack-design CIS (Contact Image Censor) in its camera. Part of the reason it skipped the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max but not the standard iPhone 15s is due to supply concerns from Sony - who were originally supposed to lead manufacturing.
This means that Will Semi, another market leader for high-end CISs, has been granted a greater market share - supplying 2024’s iPhone range.
Why should you care? It means that all phones will have a stacked camera sensor. This effectively means that the way that sensors take in light is much more efficient, getting more out of the same pictures.
In practice, this makes Apple devices much better at handling photos in low light, whilst giving a broader dynamic range. As well as operating well in low-light environments, high-light areas can be captured more authentically. The plan with a design like this is to make iPhones do more with the same basic processing power.
With just this information, it seems unlikely that the next iPad will end up with new censor designs over the next year. They are still performing well anyway. This being said, if the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max benefit significantly from the new censors, there is a chance we could see the same upgrade on an iPad a few years down the line.
