The iPhone 15 Pro will have 10x optical zoom

The iPhone Pro in the 15 line, scheduled to be released next year, is planned to be equipped with a periscope camera. It will have a focal length that provides 10x zoom compared to the smartphone’s main camera. This information comes from several reputable sources at once.

What is a periscope?

In cameras, the sensor is usually positioned along the body of the smartphone. As a result, light passes through the lens and falls directly on the sensor. The periscope, on the other hand, is constructed slightly differently, and has a special prism through which the light turns 90°. This allows the manufacturer to avoid placing the sensor longitudinally along the body and to position it transversely.

What does this do for the iPhone 15 Pro?

It increases the focal length of the camera, while maintaining the size of the sensor. There’s a simple correlation: in some cases, as the focal length increases, the area required for the optical system also increases.

Let’s say the iPhone Pro in the upcoming 15-series will have a 10x zoom camera, while the main camera optics won’t change much. That said, the periscope will have a focal length of around 260mm. In that case, you have to choose between these options: increasing the optics or decreasing the sensor. And as it gets smaller, image quality deteriorates. For this reason, smartphone companies are equipping smartphones with periscopes. Among the first devices with this type of camera was the Huawei P30 Pro, which hit the market more than 2 years ago. Samsung later installed a periscope on its Galaxy S20 Ultra.

What took Apple so long to make the Periscope?

There was likely more than one reason for it. Before introducing the new technology, the company considers aspects such as.

• Are its suppliers prepared to produce the right components in the hundreds of millions of units each year?
• Can they be obtained at a comparatively low cost?
• Is the new technology itself ready?

When it comes to cameras, you have to provide customers with a guaranteed high picture quality first of all. You have to avoid the mistake often made by nowadays producing companies: out of ten pictures taken by a consumer only two are of good quality, the other eight may not even be saved.

Of course, there are exceptions. An example is the failed decision to equip the current 13 series iPhone Pro with a 3x optical zoom camera. You can’t switch it on at all, or there’s a lot of noise. The camera is terribly annoying in different scenarios. And it is not at all clear why there is a night mode, if the lens does not work at night.

We got distracted. Back to the periscopes. Over 75 million iPhone Pro’s are released during the quarter. And according to the information available, at least one model in the new series will have a Periscope, most likely even both smartphones in the 15 line, which is about a hundred million copies.

All indications are that suppliers will be able to provide Apple with prisms and lenses of sufficiently high quality by 2023.