iPhone 13 camera megapixels: 12MP is better than 108MP on other phones

(Image credit: James Artaius)

It's crazy to me. My iPhone 13 camera megapixels amount to just 12MP – a resolution that seems positively paltry on paper. And with 48MP and even 108MP phones now commonplace, it makes my phone feel a bit feeble.

Is that really the case, though? Because whenever I use other handsets – even the best camera phones like the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra – I find that the images I take on my iPhone are almost always better. The iPhone 13 camera megapixels, limited though they may be, simply produce superior photographs.

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That's just my personal perspective, of course. And it only applies to the rear camera; I'm not going to pretend that the 8MP selfie camera is anything to write home about. However, in a world where the megapixel wars are still raging – and where rumors are swirling that the iPhone 14 Pro could have a 48MP primary camera – more doesn't necessarily mean better (just more expensive).

We've already danced this dance before, with traditional cameras. Armchair quarterbacks bemoaned that the Canon EOS R3 "only" had a 24.1MP image sensor, but anyone who has actually used it will tell you how the quality, dynamic range, ISO performance, noise and virtually any other metric blows away that of higher resolution sensors that are typically thought of as "better".

The same is true of the iPhone 13. It doesn't matter whether I'm shooting in harsh sunlight, the dead of night, at a rock concert, baseline at a basketball game, photographing a pet… the pictures are always great. Yes, there's a whole lot of computational trickery going on, but Apple just does it so much better than everyone else seems to.

Images I get from the Samsung are usually grainy, washed out, lacking in detail or definition, and just sometimes just plain 'muddy'. And there's a reason that shooting at the full 108MP resolution is just an option, not the default, on these high-res phones.

I'm not an Apple fanboy – I don't care what logo is on my phone, I just care about the pictures it takes. And right now, I'll take these 12 meagre megapixels any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

James has 22 years experience as a journalist, serving as editor of Digital Camera World for 6 of them. He started working in the photography industry in 2014, product testing and shooting ad campaigns for Olympus, as well as clients like Aston Martin Racing, Elinchrom and L'Oréal. An Olympus / OM System, Canon and Hasselblad shooter, he has a wealth of knowledge on cameras of all makes – and he loves instant cameras, too.

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