Apple's Fusion camera

The new camera on iPhone 16 with multiple personalities explained

- ANDREW WILLIAMS

THERE'S A NEW phrase being used to describe the iPhone 16 series' rear camera: the 48MP Fusion camera. The resolution? That's not new. But the other word, Fusion, is. Apple uses the term Deep Fusion for its computational photography processing, which helps dramatically improve low-light shooting in particular. But it didn't describe the iPhone 15 as having a Fusion camera in the previous generation. So what's up?

Is "Fusion" used in part to make it seem as though the iPhone 16 gets more of a camera upgrade than it really has? Sure, probably. But there's also some substance behind the name. Potentially.

Getting to the bottom of this one could also help you make the most of an iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Pro camera. Let's take a look.

There are several feature candidates for the reasoning behind the name. The first is all about how Apple exploits the style of sensor used in the iPhone 16, and how it can take on multiple identities. It can behave like a 48MP camera, a 12MP one, and a 2x zoom. But how?

Most very high-resolution phone camera sensors use what's known as a Quad Bayer array. If you want to get your head around phone cameras, you need to know a little about this kind of sensor. See "The Quad Bayer array" box opposite for more.

While the iPhone 16 may be able to register 48MP of luminance (or gain) picture info, it still only effectively has 12MP of color hue data regardless of how you treat those pixels. You might compare this to a TV display, where each of its 8.3 million pixels consists of red, green and blue subpixels. But on iPhone 16 there are four of each per pixel brick.