Apple has announced the iPhone 18. The part of the phone that motivates me to pay to upgrade is the photography pipeline. It looks as though there are still three lenses on the Pro and Pro Max. Apple press release:
The new 48MP Fusion Main camera with variable aperture is the most advanced camera Apple has ever made, bringing aperture control to iPhone for the first time along with even more creative control. Six laser-cut blades smoothly transition between different apertures, making it incredibly easy to capture the best shot by automatically adjusting for depth of field and lighting. Combined with a new sensor that improves image quality, the result is better low-light photography, crisper detail in the back of group photos, and more unique shots. Variable aperture also provides more control for creative pros by giving them the ability to manually adjust any of the four aperture settings in the Camera app, and an API is available to developers for even more control across the aperture range in their apps.
With a new computational imaging pipeline, the Main camera produces sharper, more detailed shots, and upgraded Photographic Styles with new texture and grain controls let users further dial in their desired appearance and have more creative control over their photos.4 Industry-leading video capabilities also become more versatile, with the ability to apply Cinematic effects after capture to videos shot at up to 60 fps. In Time-lapse mode, users can now record videos in 4K and Dolby Vision HDR. Audio Mix also has new algorithms that deliver higher-quality voices and can now isolate music.
Pro controls is a new customizable experience in the Camera app for iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max that makes it easier than ever for users to access their most used settings and introduces new options for manual control. Users can now adjust settings such as lens aperture, shutter speed, and white balance, or use a histogram to check exposure levels throughout a scene.
From this is it reasonable to infer that the tele and wide lenses/sensors are unchanged?
It looks as though there is an interesting new way to carry what is effectively a camera:
The Pro Max is $1,300, which is $100 more than the 17 Pro Max (256 GB of precious SSD that AI wants to steal from us).
What about the new $2000 folding phone? It has just two lenses on the back. They claim to have some sort of built-in telephoto lens on the main camera, but if that is such a great idea why isn’t it on the Pro Max? I’m skeptical!
The new watch supposedly has some better heart rate tracking features and, channeling Elizabeth Holmes, Apple wants healthy people to get tons of blood tests:
The Health app also includes movement evaluations that measure flexibility, strength, balance, and more using vision-based AI models on iPhone and heart rate data from Apple Watch. Users will be able to schedule and purchase new labs that feature over 50 key biomarkers for $119 directly through the Health app at approximately 2,000 Quest Diagnostics locations in the U.S. The redesigned Health app will arrive later this year, starting in U.S. English.
It looks as though the watch will also measure pulse ox so you can see if you’re dying, if it is time to put on the cannula in an unpressurized airplane, if it was unwise to rush straight to a ski mountain from sea level without sleeping in Denver for a couple of nights, etc.:
Readers: Who is brave enough to try the new folding thing?
If Steve Jobless was still alive, the iphone would have a 35mm sensor. Don’t forget. AI has created amazing abundance, people. The amazing abundance will continue until morale improves.
Lion, if the iphone had a 35mm sensor, it would require a lens diameter of ~50-60mm and an optical path length of 30-60mm depending on focal length and design. Probably not practical for a thin phone, even for the magic-conjuring Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs would use his reality distortion field to pair 35mm sensors with completely flat zoom telephoto lens!
3 posts today! You’re spoiling us on 9/9! Celebrating the 176th anniversary of California (where Apple is based out of) becoming a state?
I’m not brave enough. iPhone Duo is a tricky product to appreciate without actually using it for few days (similar to Tesla FSD, btw).
It has 1.4 aspect ratio, which is not enough for video. Entire form factor can turn out to be insanely great or abysmal, but I’m not spending $$$ to figure it out. Also for this price I want all the cameras and faceid.
I’m thinking about Pro Max for the cameras. I’m using Air which is both large and light – a great combo, but camera suffers. My wife is definitely going to request upgrade to Pro since she really dislikes Air’s camera.
T-Mobile is going to support same phone number on two phones, so maybe I’ll be rocking Air or Pro Max depending on the mood.
Watch health upgrade is really interesting, they are trying to kill Whoop, but I suspect their software is still going to be infuriatingly inferior.
Once I get $5000 from Trump , I will buy the Duo foldable phone.
I’ve done the preorder prep for the 18 Pro already, upgrading from the 17 Pro. I’m a gear whore, what can I say.
The Apple Watch has been able to do pulse oximetry for a long while, but Apple was sued by Masimo, and they lost, which is why you can’t see pulse ox data on the watch itself. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Watch_health_monitoring_patent_dispute for all the gory details.
In the presentation they avoided the most interesting stat – continuous o2 level monitoring at night. It seems they are not going to do it, which makes it less useful.
If https://getwellue.com/pages/o2ring-oxygen-monitor can do overnight monitoring for multiple nights without running out of battery why can’t Apple’s watch?
I think Apple *can* do that from a hardware level. They are not *permitted* to do that after they got popped for patent infringement.