In an investor be aware printed to Medium, analyst Ming-Chi Quo claims that no less than the iPhone 17 Professional Max will get its “tetraprism” digicam module upgraded from a 1/3.1″ 12MP CMOS sensor within the iPhone 16 Professional collection to a 1/2.6″ 48MP sensor. The “tetraprism” title is what Apple calls its 5x periscope digicam module on the iPhone 15 Professional Max, which is rumored to be coming to each the iPhone 16 Professional and Professional Max this 12 months.
If this report is correct, this may imply the iPhone 17 Professional Max could have three 48MP digicam modules—each the iPhone 16 Professional and 16 Professional Max are rumored to get 48MP Extremely Extensive cameras, which is able to carry ahead to the iPhone 17 collection. The bigger sensor with 4 occasions the pixels ought to supply large advantages to zoomed-in image high quality along with the flexibility to make a good deeper 12MP 10x zoom picture by utilizing simply the middle pixels of the sensor.
Kuo says it isn’t clear if the brand new 48MP sensor (which requires a brand new prism amongst different changes) will come to the smaller iPhone 17 Professional or solely the Professional Max. If it’s an unique function of the latter, it would probably be added to the iPhone 18 Professional the next 12 months.
The report claims that the entire periscope digicam system is about to endure a extra important design replace in 2027 for the iPhone 19 line to supply higher optical zoom, however any predictions that far out needs to be thought-about preliminary and tentative at finest.