According to Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro could get “the biggest leap in camera hardware” in some time. We're unable to see if there's any detail behind that claim as the article is paywalled, but at this stage the iPhone 18's exact hardware details will still be closely guarded anyway. The most widely rumored upgrade has been the addition of a variable aperture lens for the primary camera. While potentially useful in a few scenarios - being able to increase depth of field in macro shots, for instance - it's hard to argue that this would constitute a "big leap" in camera hardware. I've gone into much more detail about why a variable aperture lens really isn't a big deal in camera phones here. A physically larger, higher resolution sensor for the primary camera would be much more noteworthy, but I wonder whether Apple would want to move away from using 48MP sensors across all three modules just yet.
It's also been speculated that the iPhone 18 Pro's telephoto camera could receive a larger aperture lens. The 48MP 1/2.55" sensor was new for the iPhone 17 Pro, so that may well be carried over for the '18 Pro, but replacing the current f/2.8 lens with something faster would result in quicker shutter speeds, which is always a good thing when shooting at long focal lengths. However, what will likely be a small increase in aperture is also nothing like a leap in camera hardware. A more impressive hardware change for the telephoto camera would be to increase its zoom. Due to switching to the larger 48MP sensor for the iPhone 17 Pro's telephoto module, zoom was reduced to 4x (down from 5x in the '16 Pro). For context, the Oppo Find X9 Ultra (which is almost the same price as an equivalent iPhone 17 Pro Max) sports a 10x telephoto camera, with a sensor only marginally smaller than that in the iPhone's 4x telephoto module.
Other rumors point to the iPhone 18 Pro potentially having exclusive, pro-focussed camera software features. Quite what these could be is unknown - Apple already reserves its ProRAW image capture for iPhone Pro models. The speculation suggests that Apple "is looking to give the built-in camera app on its smartphone an upgrade...the existing iPhone camera app contains mostly basic controls."
A big leap in camera hardware for the iPhone 18 Pro would be very welcome though. Recent iPhone generations have offered incremental improvements where rival Android flagships, most notably those from Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo, have pushed camera hardware forward at a far more rapid pace. It's about time the iPhone started being revolutionary again, not merely evolutionary.
Story credit: 9 to 5 Mac
