Apple focuses on iPhone 11 camera to stay in smartphone race
Apple is banking on the three lenses adorning the iPhone 11 Pro to keep fans happy.
Apple is banking on its three-lens Pro camera to deliver cutting edge technology to iPhone devotees. iPhone 11 is otherwise less spectacular which is dangerous in an aggressive smartphone market where Samsung, Huawei, Google and others are pushing the envelope.
Samsung’s premium model, Galaxy Note 10+, not only offers a three-lens camera with an ultrawide lens as iPhone 11 Pro does, but 5G, reverse charging of accessories sitting on the phone, screen fingerprint unlocking, fast wireless charging, support for a one Terabyte microSD card, and a USB-C connector that not only offers faster data transfers than Apple’s Lightning connector, but can power devices attached to it, like an external hard drive.
Google’s Pixel 3XL and Huawei’s P30 Pro offer great night photo modes and Google’s top shot option captures frames before you press the camera button in fast action shots.
You might say it is game over and that the premium iPhone 11 has a perilous future in the market.
That summation ignores two important factors. First, as tech research organisation Telsyte keeps reminding us, Apple and Samsung have amazingly loyal users who are cemented into Apple’s iOS operating system and Android respectively. They don’t jump ship easily.
Secondly, Apple seeks not to leverage users’ data for advertising whereas Google Android basks in the practice. Apple is the choice for personal privacy.
Price is a negative factor for Apple in the Australian market where our poorly valued dollar makes reasonably priced phones in the US very expensive here. Mid range phones in Australia by Oppo, Samsung, Huawei, Nokia, LG, Motorola and more can be tempting.
If you stay with Apple, there is joy in iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max. Apart from better cameras, there’s a promise of four and five hours’ more battery life on the Pro and Pro Max, Apple’s faster A13 bionic chip processor, faster Face ID unlocking, support for more stable Wi-Fi 6, a fresh array of colours, and design changes. Pro models are stainless steel with a back made of glass with a PVD coating. The screen is brighter at 800 nits compared to 625 nits last year.
Apple this year has debuted “ultra wideband”, which uses very short radio pulses to find objects within a few centimetres, such as misplaced phones and tracking tags. Apple is believed to be developing tracking tags for this. Other applications include internal beacon navigation and pinpointing recipients in AirPlay wireless data transfers. But the completed system wasn’t rolled out.
Samsung points out in targeted YouTube ads running before Apple 11 online videos that there’s no 5G, no USB-C connector, no reverse wireless charging and no Apple Pencil support.
We know that Apple wasn’t in a position to offer 5G this year due to its earlier legal spat with Qualcomm and it's only recent acquisition of Intel’s mobile 5G business.
The one unforgivable omission is no USB-C. Apple does support it on new MacBooks and iPad Pros. Sticking with Lightning connectors on iPhone 11 means users will still have to carry around USB Type-C and Lightning cords or adapters, rather than a single USB-C charger for their laptops, phones and tablets. The dream of one universal charger is unfulfilled.
Apple kicks goals with its iPhone 11 cameras, especially the 11 Pro versions. Apple cameras generally offer great natural colour and subtle shades and contrast. Skin tones can look great.
Other manufacturers tend to brighten and saturate colours, and preserve loads of detail, but colour accuracy isn’t necessarily as good.
Apple and its developers support its triple lens camera with great software. All three are 12MP, with telephoto, wide and ultrawide lenses having focal lengths of 52, 26 and 13mm and apertures of f/2.0, f/1.8 and f/2.4 respectively.
The three lenses can all shoot video simultaneously, so an editor afterwards can swap between normal, wide and ultrawide views in post production. You can interview a subject and have the interviewer’s video in the corner of the subject's video. This is courtesy of the coming FiLMiC Pro app and for me an inspiring moment of the launch.
The sides of the camera app shows extra detail you get if you swap from telephoto to wide, or wide to ultrawide. You can spontaneously take video by pressing on the photo button, and take stills while shooting video.
There’s a coming “deep fusion” mode that uses machine learning to combine nine separately shot images. Apple vice president Phil Schiller says the iPhone 11 Pro already will have shot four images and four secondary images before you press the shutter button. It takes another longer exposure when you press, and optimises 24 million pixels for the result. Schiller says there’s 30,000 apps that use the iPhone camera.
Apple finally has added a night mode which kicks in automatically in very low light conditions. All three lenses on iPhone 11 Pro models shoot 4K video front and back at up to 60 frames per second.
The front facing camera is now 12 instead of 7MP, shoots slow motion selfies, and portrait mode can take a group shot, convert it to monochrome and delete any background.
Rotate the front facing camera to landscape and it automatically re-frames to fit yourself and others in a group shot.
These features make iPhone 11 a good choice for phone photography.
There’s three questions to ask yourself if you are considering iPhone 11. Are the new features enough to entice you to upgrade? Would you miss new features that Android offers including 5G over the life of your new phone? And can you manage the cost? Apple lets you trade in older models these days or pay by month. You can also buy a 64GB iPhone 8 for $779.
In the end the iPhone 11 models are great phones, but are they great enough?
Chris Griffith attended Apple’s launch event at Cupertino courtesy of Apple.
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