Apple's iPhone 15 Pro Max is a camera trendsetter, analyst says, and others will follow

The iPhone 15 Pro Max is the first iPhone to feature a 5x telephoto lens and it manages that by using an all-new tetraprism lens that bends light to artificially elongate the distance between the main lens and the camera's sensor. But that isn't all that makes the new lens so impressive, with one analyst noting that a specific change is already starting to set a trend among other companies.

Writing in a longer Medium post about the plans of Apple and other phone companies, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Ming-Chi Ming-Chi Kuo says that the use of a special lens construction is what makes the tetraprism so notable. Normally the multiple lenses used within a phone camera would be made of plastic, with those lenses designed to reduce distortion in the resulting photo. However, Apple's tetraprism changes things up slightly, using one glass lens and three plastic.

The result of that unorthodox setup is that the iPhone 15 Pro Max benefits from the better clarity of a glass lens without dealing with the problems of using a full-glass construction. Those problems could be greater potential for breakage and increased costs, not to mention more complicated manufacturing, for example.

Now, Ming-Chi Ming-Chi Kuo says that with Apple and Huawei now using such a lens configuration, other companies will start to take note, with premium phones in their lineups likely to go the same route moving forward.

As for the company set to build the new lenses, Largan currently puts together Apple's camera lenses but outsources the glass component. That's likely to change in the future with the company able to produce them in-house if required.