Analyst reaffirms you won't need an iPhone 16 Pro Max to get a 5x zoom lens

If you wanted to get the iPhone 15 Pro Max's fancy new tetraprism camera but didn't want to go with the huge iPhone it's attached to, you're in luck. You're going to be able to get that same camera in next year's iPhone 16 Pro instead.

That's according to a new report by supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo who had previously hinted that such a decision was in the cards for next year's top-line iPhones.

Right now, the tetraprism lens allows the iPhone 15 Pro Max to offer an improved 5x optical zoom capability, an improvement over the 3x that the iPhone 15 Pro can manage. It's thought that the sheer size of the iPhone 15 Pro Max was what gave Apple the chance to use the new lens there first, but it appears it will be able to shrink it down enough to squeeze it into the iPhone 16 Pro's diminutive frame.

Kuo made the claim in a new Medium post that goes into the future plans of Apple and other companies that use Lagan as a key supplier. The report claims that Lagan's September revenue was a 46-month high thanks to sales of the iPhone 15 Pro Max as well as the Huawei Mate 60 Pro. That strong performance is expected to continue into 2024.

As for the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, we do wonder if there will be further improvements to the latter to differentiate from the former. The 5x camera does that right now but what will Apple give the iPhone 16 Pro Max if the same camera is coming down the lineup to the smaller model?

We'll have to wait to find out - the iPhone 16 Pro models aren't expected to be announced until September 2024.