I didn’t think I’d be very likely to buy the iPhone 11. My plan to date has been to hold out another year with my iPhone X… But something we learned yesterday through a 9to5Mac exclusive will likely be enough to persuade me to upgrade this year.
Namely, that the third camera, a wide-angle one, will have some rather interesting software support.
This extra space will be occupied by a camera capable of capturing a wide-angle image as Bloomberg first reported.
Besides being used as a creative option for pictures and movies, this wide-angle ‘iPhone 11’ camera will enable a feature called Smart Frame, which captures the area around the framed area in pictures and videos so that the user can adjust the framing or perform automatic perspective and crop corrections in post. The extra information will be retained for a limited period of time and discarded automatically afterwards, for privacy reasons.
But any wide-angle lens introduces distortion. You might like the effect (it’s an artistic choice), but generally you’ll need to correct it in something like Photoshop. And it’s that which this year’s iPhones appear to be automating.
perform automatic perspective and crop corrections in post
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, iPhone 11 is going to be all about the camera(s) and that’s going to sell a lot of units to people who thought they might be waiting until next year’s 5G iPhone.
As we wrote yesterday and earlier today, “Smart Frame is going to be a tent pole feature… Expect this batch of iPhones, the last one prior to the start of the iPhone 5G super cycle in late 2020, to focus on the triple camera array, Smart Frame, and other camera-related features as the main selling point.”