It may be a big due to the beta but I’m on iOS 17 beta and I get full 12 MP from the rear camera. Although the front camera shows 7 MP unless zoomed out to wide view. I find it weird that even if I zoom in 5x on rear, it still shows 12 MP even though the file size is much smaller More on reddit.com

I think if you have anything before the 13 pro, you should go for the 16 Pro. Just my opinion. I’m rocking my 13 Pro for 1 more year at least. More on reddit.com

you taking in 4:3 or a different aspect ratio? More on reddit.com

"Megapixel" is a marketing buzzword used to compare megapixel capability between phones and cameras but falls way short of telling the entire story of overall image quality and largely irrelevant. What really matters in image quality is the cameras image sensors and the way they process images. A cheap Android with 108 megapixel capability still has to be cheap and affordable so people will buy them so they stick these impressive numbers for camera quality and skimp on the all-important image processors using smaller and inferior parts. Meanwhile, Apple clearly doesn't choose to market megapixel capability in their iPhones that comes anywhere close to Samsungs arbitrary marketing gimmick. Instead, the image sensors and processing used by cameras in iPhones are significantly more powerful and tends to perform better than Android in overall performance taking pictures in any lighting conditions. The cheapass Androids do a decent job with camera quality considering its basically a potato but if you had one in one hand with an image taken on an iPhone in the other hand to compare them, you would notice a significant difference in quality, less vibrant colors, and fuzzy or missing details. So what happens when you compare Flagship iPhones with Flagship Samsung models? Despite my disdain for Android and Samsung, I will acknowledge the top-of-the-line S23 Ultras do take really good pictures and somehow excel at capturing zoomed in quality images of the moon. But why the hell does it need four cameras on the back of it that take up quite a bit of space uncovered by protective cases and I've seen a few of them broken without being dropped. Conversely, the iPhone 15 Pro Max also takes some really good pictures with its three camera configuration. Both of the phones cameras excel at some areas in image quality and have their shortcomings in other areas. I took an S23 Ultra and 15PM and ran some camera testing at work one day for a wireless carrier. I took the two phones, one in each hand, and took photos with both of them at the same time in the same lighting conditions, and took photos outside in plenty of sunlight, indoors using artificial light, inside a small closet with lowlight, and one selfie for testing the front camera. So how did they compare? The outdoor bright sunlight photos were incredibly similar between the two phones and you would have to be a digital imaging expert to see any differences. Both were incredibly vibrant photos with an image focused on the same point on a flower. The indoor artificial lighting photos also seemed similar at first but we were able to see differences between the two. While the color quality remained similar, the iPhone image captured additional small details absent in the Ultra image. Additionally, the 15PM lowlight closet image managed to capture significantly more details with a more crisp image while the Ultra image appeared dark and useless. It should be noted Apple specifically mentions the iPhone's ability to perform well in lowlight and uses a dimly lit concert venue as an example in their marketing materials. We did not change any camera settings and if there were any special modes or switches for low light, we weren't aware of them. Finally, both selfie images seemed very similar and the Ultra image appeared slightly more vibrant while the 15PM managed to capture slightly more details. Based on this short, unscientific, impromptu camera testing experiment, both phones performed well under natural light, indoor artificial light testing gives the 15PM a slight edge, the 15PM performed better in lowlight conditions, while the front facing cameras produced similar quality images that appeared to sacrifice capturing additional image details for a slightly more vibrant looking image and in our opinion, we'd rather have the smaller details. Setting the phone comparison aside, take a 12 megapixel iPhone and compare the image quality with an image taken by a 12 megapixel DSL-R camera under the same lighting conditions. The DSL-R image will be vastly superior in every way because the image sensors are significantly bigger and produces larger pixels in the image producing more details and light processing power. Now that we've discussed megapixels versus image sensors and image quality differences between low priced and higher priced phones, how much better would you estimate the DSL-R's image would be compared to the cheap Android with a 108 megapixel camera. What about the S23 Ultra 200-megapixel camera compared to the DSL-R? Still no comparison which is why you see professional photographers using dedicated cameras and only pull out their phones in a pinch. The bottom line difference between Samsung and Apple when it comes to differences in specs and features appearing more powerful with Samsung boils down to Samsung pushing to packing new features and processing power into their phones as fast as possible no matter if those features are actually ready to be released as a finished product. Apple prefers to rollout significant feature changes like TouchID/FaceID more slowly and test the absolute shit out of them until they are perfected before releasing them. Right now consider how Samsung has already released multiple versions of two foldable smartphones for a couple years now which have been largely underwhelming, significantly flawed, and may have been recalled. Meanwhile, there have been no rumblings of talks from Apple that a foldable iPhone is anywhere remotely close to a final product release stage because Apple likes to learn from Samsung's mistakes. More on reddit.com