Apple

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. plans to launch iPhones with a more-powerful 3-D camera as soon as next year, stepping up the company’s push into augmented reality, according to people familiar with the plans.

The rear-facing, longer-range 3-D camera is designed to scan the environment to create three-dimensional reconstructions of the real world. It will work up to about 15 feet from the device, the people said. That’s in contrast with the current iPhone 3-D camera system, which points toward users and operates at distances of 25 to 50 centimeters to power Apple’s Face ID facial-recognition feature.

I tend to avoid rumors but, right or wrong, this article is full of fascinating detail. If and when AR gains enough traction to be part of our day to day lives, I think Apple will be perfectly placed to sell an entirely new generation of iPhones.

NOTE: Do not confuse AR with VR. AR (augmented reality) layers simulated information on top of what you see through your iPhone’s camera. VR (virtual reality) is a virtual world, fed to you through special interface devices, like gloves and helmets.

I see AR as eminently useful, letting you measure rooms and place virtual furniture, or helping map your trip through the grocery store, finding items and comparing prices. The use cases are here, the hardware and software is still in the works.

The linked Reddit post was called, provocatively, “I fought Apple and won!”

From the post:

I purchased an iPhone XS in September of last year. The first week of December I accidentally dropped it in my sisters swimming pool at the shallow end – a depth of approximately 1.10m. Immediately, I jumped in an pulled the phone out, switched it off and let it dry for a few hours (as indicated in the steps of what to do when your phone gets wet on the Apple website). A few hours later I turned the phone back on and all was good. Fantastic!

As you might guess, all was not good. Over time, the poster’s phone died a slow death, and they eventually took it into the Apple Store for a look see.

As you also might guess, the Apple Store opened up the phone, and:

Two hours later I come back and they say the Liquid Contact Indicators have been activated, which means there is internal liquid damage and they won’t cover liquid damage under warranty.

And this is where the story gets really interesting. The poster pointed Apple to the original rollout video for the iPhone XS, where Phil Schiller, talking about water protection, says these words:

So if you happen to be hanging by the pool, drop your phone in the water, don’t worry. Let it dry, you’ll be fine.

To see this for yourself, follow this link and jump to about 40:40.

Follow the headline link for all the legal details but, bottom line, the poster did eventually get their phone replaced.

Should the words in a marketing pitch establish repair policy? Interesting.

Last week, we highlighted a tweet from Jeremy Burge showing pairs of low light images, taken with an iPhone and a Google Pixel using Night Sight.

Jeremy pulled together his findings in a blog post that makes the case for Google’s Night Sight as the new benchmark for low light image capture on a smartphone.

From the post:

Despite being a long-time iPhone user, I often find myself with other phones for testing purposes. Sometimes they have nice features my iPhone doesn’t have, but rarely does any single feature make me even consider changing devices.

The release of Google’s Night Sight feature for the Pixel line in 2018 is a game changing feature.

Having used it for the past month, I now carry both my iPhone and Pixel of an evening. That’s how good it is.

And:

Since posting about this on Twitter, time and time again people said “just edit the iPhone pictures!”. This misses two points:

1. Most people don’t have the time or ability to fix their dark and/or blurry iPhone photos taken at night
2. Some of this cannot be done by editing. That 2-5 second time used to capture more light in the Google camera app isn’t an option provided on iOS.

I couldn’t agree with Jeremy more. Like it or not, this is the new benchmark for low-light photos.

I would gladly tap a button in the camera app to turn on/off low light mode before I take a picture. And if Apple can just do this automatically, even better. I frequently find myself unsatisfied with my iPhone camera in low light situations. I would love an iPhone version of Night Sight.

And to be fair, the iPhone XS clearly has made great low-light strides. But Night Sight runs on older hardware. It’s a software fix. Feels like this sort of technique should be possible on previous generations of iPhone.

Jeremy Burge did some side-by-side low light shots, showing the iPhone camera vs Android’s Night Sight. Scroll through the tweets below:

https://twitter.com/jeremyburge/status/1083676824343887879

To me, this is my iPhone camera’s biggest weakness, the one feature that tempts me to carry a Pixel 3, just for the ability to capture better low light images.

Google has a fantastic writeup on Night Sight in this blog post. Jump to the section titled “Capturing the Data” for the details.

As you make your way through the Twitter thread, don’t miss the interaction between Jeremy and Rene Ritchie. It’s not clear that my iPhone is not capable of producing similar, or even superior low light images. It may be simply that Apple chose not to ship a low-light mode that did not deliver pictures that met their standards. But as is, I’d rather have the oversaturated Night Sight images than ones that were simply dark.