Latest leak reveals details of iPhone 16 series camera improvements

A new report from AppleInsider claims to have all the details on the camera upgrades we can expect in the iPhone 16 lineup when it launches in less than a month. It looks like all the phones will get some hardware upgrades, but there are also some new software tricks planned.

These improvements will be available for iPhone 16 and 16 Plus

The main wide-angle lens will remain the same as the iPhone 15 (48MP, f/1.6), but the ultra-wide lens will have a larger aperture of f/2.2 (up from f/2.4). It sounds like it will likely be the same as the ultra-wide lens on the iPhone 15 Pro.

The standard iPhones support macro photography for the first time.

These improvements will be available for iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max

The wide-angle main camera remains unchanged (48 MP, f/1.78).

The telephoto camera will be the same 12MP camera with f/2.8 and 5x zoom as on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. But the iPhone 16 Pro will also get this camera; it won't be exclusive to the Max model this year.

The ultra-wide lens will move to a 48MP camera that can either shoot at full resolution or use the same 12MP “pixel binning” feature as the wide-angle camera for better sensitivity and low-light performance. Apple will likely support the ProRAW format for the first time for this camera.

Apple will improve Dolby Vision recording to support up to 3K video at 120 frames per second. Current devices max out at 1080P at 120 or 240 fps and 4K at 60 fps, so this new additional option gives you a better balance between high resolution and frame rate.

JPEG XL

Apple is expected to introduce the JPEG XL format for its camera shots this year. It will not replace other formats: JPEG, HEIF and ProRAW will still be available.

JPEG-XL is an existing, royalty-free standard image format that was officially standardized about three years ago. It offers better compression than JPEG with fewer artifacts and supports both lossy and lossless compressed images.

It supports huge images, high bit depth, HDR and animation. And it is very fast to encode and decode. It is a suitable replacement for the old JPEG format, HEIC, WebP and PNG in almost every way, offering comparable or better quality, equal or better features and comparable or better compression in most use cases.

JPEG-XL has not enjoyed much popularity so far, but Apple's inclusion of the format in the latest iPhone should give it a real boost, especially if Apple makes this format the new standard.

Record button

All four iPhone 16 models get a new Record button at the bottom right, so it's placed like a camera shutter button directly under your index finger when you hold your iPhone in landscape mode.

It will be a capacitive button that haptically mimics the feeling of clicks. It's only intended for use with camera apps, and you can choose whether it should open Apple's camera app or a third-party one. In addition to the full press to take a photo or start recording video, you can also half-press the button, which has different functions in different apps – developers can use an API to detect the half-press and decide what to do. On most professional cameras, a half-press locks focus and exposure, and it's likely that this is how Apple's standard camera app will work.

You can also slide your finger across the button, which developers can use as they please via an API. (We expect this will also have a haptic feel, like the detents on the dials of a DSLR.) This lets you adjust zoom and exposure, cycle through filters, or really do anything a developer wants to do with it.