One of the reasons the iPhone has been so popular has been its camera. Every year, Apple has quite wisely given special attention to the camera by making improvements to stay ahead of the competition.

History:

Here’s a quick history of how Apple has improved the rear facing iSight camera over the last couple of years:

iPhone 5 vs. iPhone 5s camera

• The camera was still 8-megapixels in resolution as the iPhone 5, but the lens had a larger aperture (f/2.2) and larger pixel size in the image sensor, which improved low-light performance.
• It came with True tone flash which consisted of an amber LED and a white LED, which were variably used based on the color temperature of the photo to improve color balancing.
• The camera also included automatic image stabilization, dynamic tone mapping, 10 fps burst mode, “best shot” mode and slow motion video at 120 fps.

iPhone 6 vs iPhone 5s camera

• iPhone 6 camera comes with a new sensor that features Focus Pixels, improved face detection and exposure control.
• The iPhone 6 Plus comes with Optical Image Stabalization (OIS), which works with the Apple A8 processor, gyroscope and M8 motion coprocessor to measure motion data and provide precise lens movement to compensate for hand shake in lower light.
• You can shoot full HD videos and slow-motion videos at twice the frame rate compared to the iPhone 5s. This means that it is possible to shoot full HD videos at 60 fps and take slow motion videos at 240 fps.
• Pano mode lets you take higher-resolution panoramic photos at up to 43 megapixels.
• Photos app gets new photo editing features in iOS 8.

Competition

One of the biggest advantages iPhone had over other Android phones was its camera. Android smartphone manufacturers have always claimed they have the best smartphone camera and boasted about the higher megapixel count, but they never came close to competing with the iPhone when it came to image quality.

However, competition has been catching up. This year for the first time, Android smartphones like the Galaxy S6 and the LG G4 that come with 16-megapixel camera, are rated on par or better than the iPhone 6.

Why I am excited

One of my favorite features of the iPhone every since it has been launched; has been its camera. I take a lot of photos and videos with my iPhone (which is evident from the fact that I just have 20GB storage space left in my 128GB iPhone 6 Plus.). So the camera has to be very good.

I won’t get into the debate whether the iPhone 6 camera is better than the Galaxy S6 or LG G4 camera, but the fact that the competition has caught up, is catching up or overtaken it, is presicely why I am excited. It means that there is pressure on Apple to come out with a major upgrade to the camera. Though given Apple’s track record one could argue that it seldom needs competition to keep itself motivated.

But for the first time I believe that Apple can’t wait until next year to come out with a major camera upgrade to the rear-facing camera. I also think it is high time Apple upgrades the front-facing camera as well, as a 1.2-megapixel camera is unacceptable for selfies :D.

What are the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus rumors saying 

For the last three years, Apple has launched an iPhone with a camera that has the same 8-megapixel resolution. There are rumors that it might change this year, the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus may feature a 12-megapixel camera.

However, when megapixels go up, you sacrifice battery life as it uses more power to render a bigger photo, and design compromises, as you need a bigger sensor. So even though iPhone 6s is rumored to be slightly thicker than the iPhone 6 for Force Touch technology, it seems unlikely that Apple will be able to avoid the protruding camera, for which it had received a lot of criticism with the iPhone 6. So I’m not really excited about the higher megapixel count.

There were rumors that the next iPhones will feature a dual-lens camera to improve the image quality even further, but those have been refuted.

What I really care about

I don’t really care about the megapixel count. I doubt I will be able to make out a difference in image quality, improvements are always welcome. But one department I really hope that Apple make significant improvements is the low-light performance as the quality of the images in low-light or at night on my iPhone 6 Plus are quite disappointing, which is also the case with most smartphones.

Apple could improve low-light performance of the iPhone 6s’ and iPhone 6s Plus camera by increasing the aperture size from f/2.2 to f/1.8 like LG G4 or f/1.9 like Galaxy S6, as they offer much better low-light performance compared to the iPhone 6. Apple could also bring the iPhone 6s’ camera on par with iPhone 6s Plus by including the Optical Image Stabalization (OIS) feature.

I can’t wait to see how Apple plans to respond to competition by improving the camera in the next generation iPhone. I’m quite confident that iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus will blow away competition once again.

Are you eagerly waiting for the iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus? Let me know why in the comments.