Ming-Chi Kuo: Apple to Skip iPhone 16 Camera Upgrades, Plans Major Changes for iPhone 19

Apple will skip significant camera upgrades on the iPhone 16, with substantial enhancements scheduled for the iPhone 19 series, according to Ming-Chi Kuo.

iPhone 16 to 19 Camera Updates

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has detailed several potential iPhone enhancements in a recent Medium blog post. Although he does restate the reports that the iPhone 16 Pro will have tetraprism, he also discusses the upcoming changes to that lens for the 17th through the 19th iterations of the iPhone starting in 2025.

An improved tetraprism lens might be on the "high-end iPhone 17 model," according to Kuo. The 1/2.6-inch sensor and 48MP resolution are some of the changes.

This is a significant improvement over the 1/3.1-inch 12MP tetraprism lens that is supposedly coming to the iPhone 16 Pro. Prisms in this lens will supposedly "have a shorter form factor to reduce the camera's height" and have a completely new design.

Changes in iPhone 18 Pro

If this is something that will only be available on the iPhone 17 Pro Max, Kuo thinks that the iPhone 18 Pro will get the same improvement the year after.

According to Kuo, the next major update to tetraprism won't arrive with the iPhone 19 series in 2027. Kuo claims the phones should have greater optical zoom, but other than that, details are scant.

Tom's Guide shares that little is known about the potential features of this update, although Kuo has made some guesses as to how Apple can improve the tetraprism's optical zoom.

Increasing the number of prisms in the lens would be the most obvious choice, but it would also increase the design complexity and need smaller prisms, as he noted. Maybe Apple would rather not do that unless absolutely essential, given the rumors about the problems they had making enough tetraprism lenses for the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Tetraprism Lens Complexity

Kuo makes a valid point when he says that including additional prisms in the design makes it impossible for the lens to be a tetraprism. So Apple would have to give up its current brand identity. But if the improvements are substantial enough, it could be a worthwhile deal.