Mark Spoonauer, writing for Tom’s Guide:

The 48MP camera in ProRAW mode is very impressive, especially if you want to potentially zoom in or crop an image after a fact to reframe your shot. And we really only tested one aspect of ProRAW here.

Overall, the photos shot in ProRAW mode offer more realistic, life-like contrast — particularly in the shadows — and feature fewer digital artifacts. There’s less sharpening by the iPhone’s camera software, and the images keep a broader dynamic range for making edits later. (This might also result in some of haziness and exposure differences that crept into a few of the above samples.)

Some amazing side-by-side examples in this piece.