The first iPhone launched in 2007, $499 – far less than the recently announced iPhone 18 Pro's entry price of $1,199. By contrast, the price of a quality camera has hardly changed – a Digital Rebel XTi was $899 ($1,445 adjusted for inflation) in 2007 while a broadly equivalent modern camera – the Sony ZV-E10 II – comes in for less, allowing for inflation, at $1,099.
In both cases, the cameras produce better results than the iPhone then and the iPhone 18 Pro now.
And there has been a marked – and you'd think off-putting rise – in the price of the iPhone. Despite that, I think photographers should be a lot more worried about the future of the cameras in this class than the phones – I know I am.
Why?
Because the iPhone started from close to zero when it came to its camera. That first iPhone had a 2-megapixel camera – that's 1600 x 1200 pixels. The low-light capabilities, as I recall, were little more than the ability to produce noise.
It was fixed focus and didn't even have digital zoom in the standard Camera app (not that it'd be much use at that resolution).
The camera was kept flush against the back of the relatively small phone, in a design which felt very much like Apple prioritised the form and style over the camera's functionality, but in fairness no one was sure what a camera in a phone was for.
In fact, no one really knew what a camera in a phone was going to be capable of.
There was also not even an App store at the time, let alone tons of social media apps to create pristine content for. There was no Instagram until 2010. No SnapChat until 2011. Let alone TikTok (2016).
Now the iPhone 18 Pro has an entry price of $1,199. There are much cheaper ways to get hold of a phone, and a camera.
But the new iPhones (and they're certainly not the highest megapixel counts), sports a 48-megapixel main camera with a variable aperture, and (as is common now) not just a digital zoom but a 48-megpixel camera with 4x native telephoto lens.
Combined with a 'Center Stage' front camera and ProRes RAW, Log 2 video recording and – simply but usefully – a Night Mode there are far fewer cases for reaching for the still technically better 'real camera'.
Real camera v iPhone: the value difference
I think that consumers understand the difference isn't what it used to be, and that there is one more enormous factor: speed.
A huge number of creators want their images to be immediately available on their phone to post, or to edit in a user friendly app and then post.
Plenty of cameras can transfer them via Wi-Fi and the like, but nothing is as convenient or quick as coming from the phone's own camera.
So, for most creators, most of the time, it's a battle of "good enough" versus "good".
I speak to YouTubers and other content creators all the time, and premium phones are winning that battle for them more often than not.
