How far has iPhone photography come in 10 years? I compared the iPhone 7 and iPhone Air — and the results speak for themselves

The devil's in the details

Features By Axel Metz Published 28 July 2026

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• Photo gallery
• Verdict

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The iPhone 7 isn’t remembered as being a particularly important iPhone release, but it did represent several ‘firsts’ for Apple. It was the first iPhone to lose the traditional headphone jack, the first to boast IP67 water resistance, and the first to swap the mechanical Home button for a pressure-sensitive equivalent.

The iPhone 7 was also the first standard-sized iPhone to feature Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), which uses physical gyroscopes to counteract shake-induced blur, and has been a feature of every iPhone released since (that’s 35 models and counting).

Why am I writing about the iPhone 7? Because it arrived almost a decade ago — on September 16, 2016, to be precise — and because I came across TechRadar’s iPhone 7 review sample during a recent clearout of our office cupboard.

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I’m currently using the iPhone Air — released on September 19, 2025 — as my daily phone, which is a similarly thin and lightweight iPhone with only one rear camera, and so I thought it would be fun (and nostalgic!) to compare the camera capabilities of these two devices to see how far Apple’s camera hardware has come in 10 years. The answer, as you can imagine, is 'very far'.

Specs

Before I jump into the side-by-side comparisons, here’s a table detailing the key camera specs of the iPhone 7 and iPhone Air:

Swipe to scroll horizontally

It's worth noting that the iPhone Air defaults to shooting in 24MP, rather than 48MP, via a 'Fusion' process that merges 12 high-dynamic-range pixels and 12 low-dynamic-range pixels into a single 24MP shot. You can choose to shoot in 48MP on new iPhones like the iPhone Air, but I stuck to the default option for this comparison.

Photo gallery

Right, onto the side-by-side photos. I took both phones on a walk around the neighborhood, comparing their wide-shooting capabilities, ability to capture color, digital zoom capabilities (neither device has a dedicated telephoto zoom), and low-light shooting capabilities.

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