Apple may use Samsung for iPhone cameras, ending longtime Sony run

Apple mightiness commencement utilizing Samsung camera sensors arsenic soon arsenic 2026, marking nan extremity of Sony’s decade-plus tally arsenic nan sole supplier of nan phones’ camera sensors.

The phones are expected to usage a Samsung-made “1/2.6-inch 48MP ultra-wide CMOS image sensors” starting “as early arsenic 2026,” according to proviso concatenation expert Ming-Chi Kuo. The rumor doesn’t propose whether Samsung will switch Sony for immoderate different iPhone camera sensors.

Although Apple doesn’t usually talk astir who makes its components, CEO Tim Cook said successful 2022 that Sony had been its iPhone camera supplier for much than 10 years. Indeed, past reports person suggested that Sony sensors were utilized successful phones like nan iPhone 6 and the iPhone 8.

Given package processing and Apple’s penchant for creating “true to life” images (to quote Apple camera VP Jon McCormack’s interview pinch PetaPixel), nan move wouldn’t mean iPhone photos will abruptly look for illustration they were taken pinch a Samsung phone.

But if nan rumor is true, 48MP is simply a bully bump from, say, nan iPhone 15 Pro’s 12MP ultrawide and could mean much elaborate shots. And assuming nan lens would spell connected a Pro telephone (which isn’t a given, considering recent rumors of a single-camera iPhone 17 “slim” phone), it would greatly use nan Vision Pro’s stereoscopic “spatial” videos, which are created by nan ultrawide and main lens moving successful tandem. At nan moment, those videos are very muddy moreover successful bully lighting and hardly worthy making successful debased light.