In the field of mobile phone photography, the iPhone has long been the first echelon level. However, in recent years, domestic machines have focused on cameras, and since the introduction of the DXO list, the iPhone's camera strength has begun to be questioned. "12 million in 10,000 years", "DXO can't be on the list", "Android is ready to use 200 million pixels"... Online criticism has risen and fallen, almost all of which believe that Cook is squeezing toothpaste and that the iPhone is going to be cold at any time.
I have repeatedly stated in my experience articles that although the pixels of the iPhone are only 1200W, its comprehensive shooting experience is still a proper first-class level. However, touching the conscience, the iPhone should indeed upgrade its camera, after all, today's iPhone in some complex background environments to take samples far less than the Android flagship, let alone in a low-light environment.
However, according to Tianfeng International analyst Guo Mingqi, the iPhone 14 series will use a 48 million pixel sensor to replace the 12 million pixel sensor that will remain unchanged for 10,000 years. The diagonal length of this new sensor is increased by 25% to 30% compared with the previous generation, and the sensor area will be increased to 1/1.3 inch, which is very close to the main camera (OV48C) size of the Xiaomi Mi 10 Extreme Commemorative Edition. At the same time, Apple also equipped the new machine with a 7P lens, which will also increase the height of the camera by 5% to 10%.
Seeing this news, I can't help but sigh a little, the door-cutting Apple is finally willing to give the iPhone something new, but considering that the iPhone has been "optimized" for 12 million pixels for eight years, if the iPhone 14 series really needs to use 48 million pixels, does this mean that Apple's camera logic after this will be greatly changed?
What exactly is Apple's camera logic?
We all know that the camera effect of the mobile phone is not completely linked to the pixel, and it involves a variety of factors such as sensor size, mobile phone processor computing power and optimization of various algorithms. Not to mention that 99% of the high-pixel mobile phones on the market will use "four-in-one" or even "eight-in-one" technology to generate 12-megapixel or 24-megapixel photos when taking pictures, which is even inferior to the full-powered iPhone in terms of image quality, which is also one of the important factors that most users will think that the iPhone performs well.
The "four-in-one" technology is simply that the mobile phone will combine the information and data in each set of pixels when shooting, and eventually transform the four smaller pixels into one larger pixel. Although pixel merging technology is mainly used to improve the brightness of the picture in the case of low light or poor shooting conditions, many mobile phone manufacturers often use this function by default in order to reduce the size of the photo, improve the imaging speed and quality, and only in the "more" page of the mobile phone camera can the high pixel mode be turned on.
Therefore, in my opinion, the iPhone's 12 million pixels have become an advantage, because the CMOS size of the phone is fixed, the more pixels, the smaller the unit area, the greater the pixel density, the signal interference will be amplified, there will be noise, smearing, and the picture is not sharp enough. And when the size of the sensor is similar, the lower pixel sensor has better low-light performance, because a single pixel can accept more light, theoretically compared to the high pixel will have lower picture impurities, of course, higher pixel sensors will usually have pixel merger scheme to enhance the image quality.
And it is precisely because of this 1200W pixel sensor that the iPhone can have higher processing efficiency when processing photos, so that the entire imaging system of the iPhone can run in a silky smooth state. These are things that Android manufacturers can't do at present and can't catch up in a short period of time.
Although in everyone's cognition, the iPhone lens has not been upgraded for seven or eight years, in fact, starting from the iPhone 6s, the CMOS sensor of each generation of iPhone has shown an increasing trend, and there are real upgrades in camera stabilization, focusing, etc., these points play an indispensable role in the final imaging effect.
There is also a point we should pay attention to, ordinary mobile phone screen preview picture (not magnified), 1080p screen equivalent pixels of about 200w pixels, 800w pixels have been close to the clarity of the 4K screen, and 1200w pixels is a golden point, to ensure that the film has a certain amplification of the redundant space, the unit pixel area will not be too small, and will not bring too much pressure to the processor.
Of course, I am not against today's serious high-pixel sensors, and I don't think that high pixels are necessarily the wrong direction, but now our demand for high pixels in mobile phones is really not as big as imagined. Take the most common sharing as an example, most of the mobile phone screen pixels are around the million level, even a sample of 100 million pixels on the same screen is difficult to compare its advantages, if you like to zoom in several times to dig up the details of the photo, then I did not say.
So it seems that Apple's eight years of not upgrading the pixels of the iPhone has its own reasons, I personally also quite agree with this approach, it is true that the high pixel in the magnification of the sharpness is indeed much better than the low pixel, but how many people will pick up and open the camera every time to activate the high pixel mode? It is better to spend more time on the "low pixel" mode.
Secondly, at present, many social media (such as the national software WeChat) and websites will compress the photos and videos uploaded by users because of the need to reduce the pressure on network bandwidth, and the photos seen by other users are basically only a few tens of K or hundreds of K, and the video may also be too mushy to watch. No matter how clear and how high the resolution of the user uploads the photo, in the end, it is not able to compete with compression processing.
100 million pixels or even 200 million pixels sounds very strong, but 12 million pixels seems to be completely enough, for us ordinary consumers, the right is the most important.
So high pixels, is it necessary for Apple?
So the question is, since Apple's 12 million pixels is the best solution for the current mobile phone photography experience, why do you suddenly want to upgrade the pixels of the sensor? In my opinion, there are two main reasons:
First, Apple believes that the phone's 4K video is not a bottleneck, and they hope that the iPhone can shoot 8K video with higher resolution and more room for post-editing. In fact, this can be seen from the image logic of the iPhone in the past two years, in 2016, when Android manufacturers were still making a fuss about taking pictures, the iPhone 7 took out the trump card of 4K video recording.
The focus of image upgrades for each subsequent generation of iPhones has also shifted to video, so on the iPhone X we saw 4K 60 frames of video, on the iPhone 12 Pro Max we saw The Dolby Vision and Apple Pro Raw formats, and on the latest iPhone 13 series, we saw the ProRes video format and the analog movie mode.
It is not difficult to see that Apple is strengthening the iPhone's video shooting capabilities step by step according to the standards of the film industry (although there is still a huge gap with professional equipment), greatly reducing the cost of consumers to shoot "good" videos, not setting various thresholds for entry-level consumers, and not setting too low a ceiling for "old birds".
But it is not difficult to see that 4K video has become the mainstream of the public, and almost all video platforms have introduced 4K picture quality options, which means that Apple, as a "video pioneer", has to work hard to innovate, so one reason to choose a 48-megapixel sensor may be that it can shoot 8K-level video.
As for the second reason, it is relatively simple, today's iPhone needs more selling points to enhance product competitiveness, after all, the Android camp has long been different from the past, and it has been very close to or even surpassed the iPhone in all aspects. (e.g. charging, telephoto lenses, night scenes, signals, etc.)
According to the data of relevant market statistics agencies, in January 2022, the market share of the iPhone in the Chinese mobile phone market continued to decline, and it has fallen to the fourth place. On how to quickly attract attention, pixels are not high enough, and whether the photo is good enough is definitely a proper traffic password.
Regardless of whether 100 million pixels can beat the better optimized 12 million pixels, at least users should sound more comfortable. In the cognition of most users, the larger the pixel, the better the photo, which is the "truth", for this selling point, mobile phone manufacturers will of course continue to improve their paper parameters. So from a selling point point, high pixels are definitely the future.
So whether from Apple's point of view or from the perspective of our ordinary consumers, the iPhone 14 series is a good thing to use 48MP, of course, provided that Apple can optimize this new 48 million pixel sensor like optimizing the 12 million pixel sensor.
However, compared to the 48-megapixel sensor, I personally hope that Apple can see a periscope telephoto lens with a good quality on the iPhone 14 series, although today's iPhone also has a telephoto, but its experience is really too far away from the Android flagship.
Therefore, today, although we can't say that the direction of the high-pixel road must be wrong, after all, the evolution and upgrading of technology takes time to run in, but it must be admitted that the manufacturer's too aggressive eventually caused the user experience to roll over. Therefore, before Apple launches 48 megapixels, it is necessary to consider how to optimize this new sensor, but we don't have to worry too much about this, after all, Apple will never introduce a configuration that they consider "immature". As for whether the iPhone 14 series will be 48 million pixels in the end, how much improvement will be made in terms of photography, we will have to wait until September this year to know.