iPhone 11 will have a triple-camera to bring the fight to Huawei Mate 20 Pro

Apple is toiling away on its latest iPhone models, which will likely launch in early September if the company sticks to its traditional release schedule. Ahead of the official launch, we've heard some very interesting new rumours about the phones.

As well as charging and syncing via a USB-C cable (yes, that means you're going to have to replace all of your Lightning cables), sources have now revealed details about the front and rear-facing cameras on new Apple-branded handset.

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It sounds like Apple is going to follow the recent trend of squeezing as many cameras as possible on the back of your smartphone. The iPhone XS follow-up – iPhone XI? iPhone 11? iPhone XX? – is tipped to add an extra cameras to the previous dual-lens system. While that's not as much as the quadruple shooter on the back of the rival Galaxy A9, it does mean the new iPhone will stand toe-to-toe with the likes of the Huawei P20 Pro, Huawei Mate 20 Pro and (if the rumours are true) Samsung Galaxy S10 when it launches next month.

Serial tipster Steve Hemmerstoffer, better known for his Twitter handle @OnLeaks, claims the iPhone XS successor will have a triple-camera that sits horizontally on the back of the handset, similar to the rear-mounted camera on the iPhone 8 Plus.

The triple-camera will purportedly consist of a 10-megapixel sensor, 14-megapixel sensor, and a third, unknown camera. Apple currently uses its dual-camera set-up for Portrait Mode shots, which add an artificial, adjustable bokeh-style blur to the background behind the subject of the photograph. The dual camera – which combines a telephoto and wide-angle lens – also enables 2x optical zoom, something that could theoretically increase with the addition of more cameras.

For comparison, Huawei already offers 3x optical zoom with its triple-camera P20 Pro, while rival Oppo is purportedly introducing 10x optical zoom to its next flagship, which is due to be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow next month.

Apple will presumably continue to use telephoto and wide-angle lenses, although this detail isn't specified in the latest report.

The powerful triple-camera set-up on the Mate 20 Pro was one of the primary reasons T3 named it the best Android smartphone money can buy right now.

Meanwhile, Apple is also tipped to upgrade the front-facing camera from 7-megapixels on the current iteration to 10-megapixels. Earlier leaks around the handset suggest that optimisations to the facial recognition Face ID sensors will allow the notch to take up less space at the top of the iPhone screen.

Apple is also said to be abandoning its L-shaped battery cell in favour of a "big square" inside the next iteration of its best-selling smartphone.

As always, it's worth taking these latest rumours with a healthy pinch of salt. As reliable as Steve Hemmerstoffer has been in the past, the renown leakster has admitted that the latest iPhone information originates from prototype devices that have yet to finalised and therefore could still be subject to change.

Details around the unannounced handsets tend to firm-up in the summer, once Apple has kickstarted production to fill its warehouses with enough devices to meet the initial pre-order demand. Stay tuned for more.

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