The iPhone 16 Pro will Max out its camera and the 17 Pro Max should further step it up
The tetraprism camera is one of the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s key selling points. | Image Credit — Apple
Next year’s iPhone 17 Pro Max could then take a massive leap to a 48-megapixel secondary camera with (obviously) “enhanced photo quality and zoom functionality.” Some of that bad boy’s imaging details are unsurprisingly still unknown, and the same goes for the non-Max iPhone 17 Pro’s telephoto sensor, which could stay at the current 12 megapixel count or go up to 48MP as well.
Even bigger upgrades are tipped for the iPhone 19 series
If both the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max end up featuring 48MP tetraprism cameras (which is naturally still a big “if”), the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max are then expected to keep said vastly improved sensors largely unchanged in the fall of 2026.
That doesn’t sound particularly exciting (because not all new iPhones are), but the iPhone 19 family could enter the picture a year later with a “more substantial improvement” in the camera department. Yes, even “more substantial” than the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s predicted upgrade from a 12 to a 48MP telephoto sensor.
The iPhone 15 Plus doesn’t come with a telephoto camera, but the iPhone 19 might. | Image Credit — PhoneArena
