Comparing the cameras on iPhones 6, SE, XS, 11, and 12 Pro

I upgraded my daily carry computer, or what us old people call a phone, to an iPhone 12 Pro this week. Upon clicking the shutter a few times I could see there was a big difference in the new camera, but I wanted to compare photos to former iPhone cameras. So I pulled out all the old iPhones in the house and took the same photo on each one. It worked out pretty good as the four cameras were each mostly two years apart in release dates.

Control notes

All photos were taken on the iPhone with a fresh install, no apps, or settings changed, no iCloud logged in. I simply tapped to focus and expose inside the default camera app, and turned off flash for consistency. All phones were held in a Peak Design Travel Tripod with the phone attachement. I tried to keep the framing consistent, but if it’s not, either the iPhone lens placement changed, or this free blog post doesn’t live up to even my standards. The iPhone SE is the first generation SE, the 12 is a 12 Pro. Taken with default settings including HDR/Smart HDR/HDR 3, on the 1x lens. The only edits made are to the HEIC files taken on cameras which save HEIC, those files have been converted to JPG using MacOS Automator.

You may want to right click on images and open in a new window to see full resolution, and honestly, I’m unsure if micro.blog actually compresses and/or resizes files so if you can still read this line I haven’t edited with original uploads to somewhere else.

Cameras used

iPhone 6, released September 19, 2014, 8MP f/2.2
iPhone SE, released March 31, 2016, 12.2 MP f/2.2
iPhone XS, released September 21, 2018, 12MP ƒ/1.8 lens
iPhone 11 (for one Night Mode photo), released September 20, 2019, 12MP ƒ/1.8 lens
iPhone 12 Pro, released October 16, 2020, 12MP ƒ/1.6 lens

Here’s a comparison of the four cameras as Apple sees fit.