Speculative and tenuous hand-wringing about distant, unlikely use cases is not a compelling rebuttal. We know 12mp photos look good on 6 inch, high resolution screens. They even look good on desktop computers and TVs.
Why would you view 2D images in a stereoscopic 3D headset designed for video? Do existing photos look bad in current VR headsets because they lack resolution? I haven’t used any of the modern VR headsets but I’m willing to bet that there isn’t a significant difference between a 12mp and “48mp” iPhone 14 pro photo on a VR headset.
You’re also ignoring the context — of course higher resolution is better in isolation, no one would argue otherwise. But it comes with significant trade offs, like the FOUR SECOND capture time and the enormous file sizes.
If you want to print a cropped photo from an iPhone on a large poster (be honest — do you know anyone who currently prints iPhone photos on posters on a regular basis? I’d argue that hardly anyone prints iPhone photos at all nowadays, and especially not at large poster sizes), 12mp vs “48mp” isn’t going to make a difference, it’s going to look bad either way.
Anyone seriously concerned about their ability to print large format posters from cropped images is going to be using a full frame or medium format camera.
We know current iPhone photos look fine on 6inch high PPI displays (displays that already exceed the resolution of the human retina) and when printed at common sizes (4x6, 8.5x11). That’s never going to change. Making the iPhone camera workflow significantly worse for users now is not an acceptable trade off for vague, hypothetical future use- cases.
