Apple may use Samsung for iPhone cameras, ending longtime Sony run

Apple might start using Samsung camera sensors as soon as 2026, marking the end of Sony’s decade-plus run as the sole supplier of the phones’ camera sensors.

The phones are expected to use a Samsung-made “1/2.6-inch 48MP ultra-wide CMOS image sensors” starting “as early as 2026,” according to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The rumor doesn’t suggest whether Samsung will replace Sony for any other iPhone camera sensors.

Although Apple doesn’t usually talk about who makes its components, CEO Tim Cook said in 2022 that Sony had been its iPhone camera supplier for more than 10 years. Indeed, past reports have suggested that Sony sensors were used in phones like the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 8.

Given software processing and Apple’s preference for creating “true to life” images (to quote Apple camera VP Jon McCormack’s interview with PetaPixel), the switch wouldn’t mean iPhone photos will suddenly look like they were taken with a Samsung phone.

But if the rumor is true, 48MP is a nice bump from, say, the iPhone 15 Pro’s 12MP ultrawide and could mean more detailed shots. And assuming the lens would go on a Pro phone (which isn’t a given, considering recent rumors of a single-camera iPhone 17 “slim” phone), it would greatly benefit the Vision Pro’s stereoscopic “spatial” videos, which are created by the ultrawide and main lens working in tandem. At the moment, those videos are very muddy even in good lighting and hardly worth making in low light.