iPhone 14 Pro’s 48MP ProRAW photos will take up 3x more space than 12MP

The iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max are the first Apple phones to feature a new 48MP rear camera, a major upgrade from the standard 12MP sensor on the previous model. Now, according to code discovered in this week's iOS 16 release by MacRumors contributor Steve Moser, a 48MP ProRAW photo is about 75MB in size. That's three times larger than photos taken with the 12MP sensor on the iPhone 13 Pro and standard iPhone. While this may seem logical, it's important to note that this will affect how storage capacity is chosen.

“ProRAW photos on the wide lens at 1× can be saved at 12 or 48 MP. Night mode, flash, and macro photos will always be saved at 12 MP."
A ProRAW file will be approximately:
• 25 MB at 12 MP
• 75 MB at 48 MP

— Steve Moser (@SteveMoser) September 7, 2022

Also, the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max have a 12MP 3x telephoto lens for zooming, but Apple claims it has a "2x telephoto" camera feature that just crops the main camera's image in.

In a short hands-on video by YouTuber Sara Dietschy following Apple's "Far Out" event, a photo taken with the 48MP sensor takes up 80.4MB at 8,064 x 6,048 resolution. The increased storage for 48MP ProRAW photos is an important aspect for customers to consider when choosing a storage variant when buying a phone. The ‌iPhone 14 Pro‌ and ‌iPhone 14 Pro‌ Max are available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB storage variants.

The new 48MP primary sensor captures the crisp detail of ProRAW photos and features "a new machine learning model [that] delivers sharper images and less noise for unprecedented detail."

Apple's 12MP telephoto lens

On the other hand, the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max have a 12MP telephoto lens. The company claims it can offer 2x zoom, in reality, all the sensor does is crop the image from the main camera. Apple says it's able to offer a "2x telephoto" option by cropping to the center of the viewfinder, thus using the 12MP capabilities of the 48MP sensor.

“With this approach, we can go beyond the three fixed lenses of the Pro camera system and add a new 2x telephoto option for our users. We use the middle 12MP of the new sensor to provide full resolution photos with optical quality and 4K video," said product manager Vitor Silva during the iPhone 14 series event.

The "2x telephoto" feature is also mentioned on Apple's website, describing it as "optical quality." However, this is not a separate 2x telephoto camera or optical zoom, but a simple digital zoom for the main non-telephoto camera. This solution doesn't seem to use image fusion techniques. It also doesn't appear to use software tricks like Google's Super Res Zoom or multi-frame image processing.

While there's nothing wrong with Apple offering a 2x option in the camera app, the use of "2x telephoto" and "optical quality" certainly misleads people into thinking it's more than just digital zoom or cropping. Compared to Apple, the Android camp offers Added more zoom capabilities.