Smartphone cameras have been getting better for years now. (Sorry, that camera bump on the back of your phone probably isn’t going away anytime soon.) And, naturally, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo in a recent Medium post, Apple has big plans for future iPhone cameras.
We’ve already heard a few rumors on camera upgrades for the iPhone 17 Air and iPhone SE 4, but this latest info from Kuo suggests a major change headed to “the 2026 high-end iPhone 18,” which I’m assuming refers to the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.
Kuo says the phone(s) will see the “wide-camera lens upgrading to a variable aperture camera, significantly enhancing the user photography experience.”
Smartphone cameras with variable aperture aren’t new — Samsung adopted the feature first with the Galaxy S9 series in 2018 — but the results are clearly superior to cameras with fixed aperture, and more akin to DSLR cameras. It’s not clear yet how much this might increase the price of Apple’s high-end iPhone 18 models (if at all), but for now, let’s deep-dive into how exactly the upgrade would improve your photography.
What an iPhone camera with variable aperture means for you
A larger aperture, or a lower f-number (like the iPhone 16 Pro camera’s f/1.78 aperture), can hone in on one area of a photo really well, but the background is often blurry.
Right now, the iPhone 16 Pro’s aperture is fixed, which means every single photo you take will allow the same amount of light in and produce similar results. By giving the iPhone 18’s camera variable aperture, you’ll still be able to take those sharp shots with blurry backgrounds that isolate your subject, but you’ll also be able to take photos that look crisp all over.
Variable aperture is one of the features that makes DSLR cameras so capable of taking great photos. Of course, DSLR cameras typically offer a set number of aperture options, called f-stops. If the high-end iPhone 18 takes after Samsung’s Galaxy S9 series, users may only get two f-stops to swap between.
The big difference between Samsung’s Galaxy S9 series from 2018 and Apple’s iPhone 18 series that’ll likely debut in 2026 is the buzzword everyone’s probably sick of by now: AI.
By incorporating Apple Intelligence features within its camera app and pairing them with a lens capable of two or more apertures, the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max might just have the best camera setup of any smartphone (dare I say, it may even act as a DSLR replacement) — you’ll just have to wait until late 2026 to try it out for yourself.
