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

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

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

Although Apple doesn’t usually speech 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 the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 8.

Given bundle processing and Apple’s penchant for creating “true to life” images (to punctuation Apple camera VP Jon McCormack’s interview with PetaPixel), the power wouldn’t mean iPhone photos volition abruptly look similar they were taken with a Samsung phone.

But if the rumor is true, 48MP is simply a bully bump from, say, the iPhone 15 Pro’s 12MP ultrawide and could mean much elaborate shots. And assuming the 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 payment the Vision Pro’s stereoscopic “spatial” videos, which are created by the ultrawide and main lens moving successful tandem. At the moment, those videos are precise muddy adjacent successful bully lighting, and hardly worthy making successful debased light.