Apple has succumbed to what was resisted for years: megapixels do matter

Apple has already celebrated the traditional Keynote to present your devices For the coming months. He has renewed his three Apple Watch families (with the Series 11, SE 3 and the Ultra 3), but we also have some Airpods pro 3 that began to be necessary. The main course, as usual, are the mobiles and we already have on the table the iPhone 17he iPhone 17 Pro and the iPhone Air that arrives to compete the curious Superdelgados playground.

Much of what is presented is conservative, but we had something very curious that does not usually happen with those of Cupertino: They have marcheds. Twice, in addition, and with two decisions that concern a single model: the iPhone 17 Pro. The first is rectifying with the materials, passing the glass and the titanium to aluminum, being a Better material to solve a problem that the iPhone have been dragging for years.

The second has to do with the megapixels of the Telefoto camera. Because for years Each new iPhone defended that the telephoto only had 12 megapixelsnow they take chest with a new 48 megapixel sensor.

And with an optical zoom that is 4x instead of 5x of the last generations.

The 48 megapixels of the iPhone 17 Pro Telefoto

When the rest of the mobile industry He embarked on a race to conquer the megapixels (24, 48, 64 megapixels that strengthened in the mid -range, 108 and even 200 megapixels), There were a few companies that remained faithful to their philosophy: Google and Apple.

Not directly, but implicit in their presentations, both defended that the 12 megapixels allowed sensors with pixels of a larger size, improving the capture of light and, at the same time, allowing computational photography to be carried out with agility (without long waiting times in the process) and with files of a contained size.

Because climbing megapixels has a weight in the result: The same is not processed A photo at 12 mpx than one at 50 MPX and, the smaller the pixel of a sensor, the more megapixels, but less light “catch” and there are worst results with high lights and with shadows, for example. But the day arrived: Google went up to 50 megapixels with the Pixel 6 Pro and Apple did the same reaching the 48 megapixels with the iPhone 14 Pro.

The approach of both has gone very hand, using those extra megapixels to make available to the user A 2X digital zoom which is a sensor cut. This has been called for years “zoom with optical quality”, not “optical zoom” because the software uses the main camera as hardware, but virtually cut the sensor to make that 2x increase.

Quality is, in many cases, indistinguishable to that of a photo taken with a 2x optical. It would be necessary to talk that the focal distance of a 2x optical offers a different perspective, but in terms of image quality, those 2x of iPhone and Pixel are excellent. However, while the rest of the competition mounted sensors with more megapixels in all its cameras, Apple kept the telephoto anchored in the 12 megapixels. And so since they premiered it in the iPhone 7 Pluswhich is said soon.

Telefoto sensors were being more and larger, yes, but the resolution did not change and that had a price: the digital zoom of the iPhone from the optical zoom of each generation (2x for years, but later 3x and 5x) It was far behind the rest of the industry. With increasingly present and mobile computational photography with an increasingly clear zoom thanks to that hardware mixture (lenses + megapixels) and software, Apple was staying behind. Until now.

Finally, those of Cupertino have taken a step forward with three cameras with 48 megapixels. Thus, photos can be taken at full resolution or use the factory resolution (12 megapixels, but with larger virtual pixels to improve photography exposure and control size), but above all, allow a higher quality digital zoom.

With the iPhone 17 Pro, Apple states that It is “how to have eight professional goals in your pocket” And, far from the brave marketing, they are part of reason. The iPhone 17 Pro has three cameras:

• Wide angle or 0.5x
• Main or 1x
• 4x Telefoto

But, with different clippings of the sensor and the macro mode using the wide angle, we get 1.2x, 1.5x and 2x “hybrids” and one step further: an 8x that will be the one that applies the same formula as the 2x a couple of years ago: a cutting of the 48 megapixel sensor of the telephoto. In addition, it is a sensor 56% larger than the previous one, so photodiodes will also have an adequate size.

On paper, It is more user versatilityand about practice is good news. It is true that the word “digital” has a tremendously negative connotation when we talk about the zoom due both to what the digital cameras did years ago and to the digital results of the mobile themselves, but with those clippings of the sensor that are achieved using large sensors And with a lot of megapixels, the thing changes.

It is Apple surrendering to evidence And, although we have to wait for the analysis of the iPhone 17 Pro to test these cameras, examples such as those seen with the Honor Magic V5he Pixel 10 Pro or the Samsung Galaxy S25 UltraThey allow us to excite ourselves with that 8x “of optical quality.”

Now, there are those who can see it as a step back with respect to the 5x optical of the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 15 pro maxbut from my experience with the 2x hybrid of the iPhone (even of the 16 base), I think it is a movement in the right direction. And it is also about to see how the strictly digital zoom behaves beyond that 8x hybrid.

Google and Samsung are already applying generative artificial intelligence to give the user “images” – not both “photographs” – with increases as extravagant as a 30x, 50x or 100x. On the page specsApple confirms that the digital zoom will be up to 40x, we will have to see under what conditions.

In Xataka | There is a key to radically improve mobile photography. The problem is that only Xiaomi is applying it