The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus have finally been shown off to the world for the first time and both phones have been generating a lot of buzz over their latest features. The loss of the 3.5mm headphone jack is probably the most controversial part of Apple’s new handsets, but by far the most interesting new feature is the iPhone 7 Plus’ dual camera sensors.
If you’re a little lost by what that means, we’ve got you covered, as we’ve gathered together everything you need to know about this fancy new camera setup, including its specs, special features and how it looks to be shaping up against the rest of its Android competition.
iPhone 7 Plus camera: Specs
Dual cameras aren’t exactly new - we’ve seen them appear on plenty of the iPhone’s Android rivals, including the LG G5 and Huawei P9 to name just a few - but this is the first time Apple’s included one on its new handset. It’s unique to the iPhone 7 Plus as well, as the regular iPhone 7 only has one camera sensor.
Each of the iPhone 7 Plus’ sensors has a 12-megapixel resolution, but they both perform very different functions. One is a standard wide angle 28mm lens, while the other is something quite new - a 66mm telephoto lens.
This essentially adds an enhanced optical zoom to the camera, allowing for better close-up shots than you would with your typical wide angle lens. When the telephoto lens is enabled, you’ll get a 2x optical zoom as standard, which means you can zoom in and out when taking your shots without losing image quality. If you want to zoom further in, Apple’s new image signal processor can apply a digital zoom up to x10, allowing you to really get in close when you’re shooting at a distance.
There’s optical image stabilisation and a wide f/1.8 aperture, too, which should dramatically improve low-light photography. OIS will reduce hand shake, while the wide aperture will allow up to 50% more light into the lens compared to the the f/2.2 aperture lens on the iPhone 6S. You’ve also got four LEDs in the flash now, for 50% more light when you’re shooting at night.
iPhone 7 Plus camera: Features
To help you take advantage of the new telephoto lens, Apple’s added a brand new zoom soft key just above the onscreen shutter button. Tap it, and you’ll automatically enable the x2 optical zoom, but you can also drag it left and right to bring it all the way up to a x10 software zoom.
Apple’s also tweaked its Portrait mode for the iPhone 7 Plus, as an upcoming software update will add in the ability to take shallow depth of field photos. It essentially mimics the qualities of a traditional bridge or DSLR camera, which can blur the background of a photo to really make the subject in the foreground pop out of the picture.
Simply select Portrait mode on the iPhone 7 Plus, as the same effect will appear in real-time on the on-screen viewfinder, giving you a live preview of Apple’s depth of field feature at work. It should make for some stunning photos, but we’ll have to wait and see how it works once it’s made available via an OTA update.
iPhone 7 Plus camera: Meet the competition
Of course, the iPhone 7 Plus has some pretty stiff competition ahead of it when it comes down to overall picture quality. For instance, LG’s G5 has a large 16-megapixel sensor in addition to a separate 135 degree 8-megapixel sensor for fun, wide-angle shots.
The 16-megapixel rear camera is where the G5 really shines, as its high detail levels surpass even the shots we took with Samsung’s Galaxy S7’s camera. It really showed its worth in low-light conditions, too, but it was the extra wide-angle lens that really made the G5 stand out, as this is something that Samsung (and the rest of its Android competition, for that matter) simply doesn’t offer.
There’s also the Huawei P9, which teamed up with German camera and optics manufacturer Leica for its rear dual camera. Here, you’ve got a 12-megapixel RGB sensor and another 12-megapixel monochrome-only sensor.
The P9’s f/2.2 aperture lenses aren’t quite as impressive as the new iPhone 7 Plus, but image quality is impressive, with fantastic outdoor shots garnering plenty of detail. It suffers a little indoors, particularly in low-light, but the ability to shoot in monochrome certainly makes for some pretty artistic shots under the right conditions.
Ultimately, though, both the G5 and P9 are giving you a second tool to take different kinds of shots, whether it’s wide-angle or in black and white. An optical zoom, on the other hand, sounds a little dull by comparison, so it will be interesting to see what it adds to the iPhone 7 Plus’s overall camera quality once we get one in for review.
More interesting is the depth of field update that’s coming later this year. Unlike the optical zoom, I think this has a lot more potential to be the iPhone 7 Plus’ must-have camera feature, but only time will tell whether it will be able to measure up to the G5 and P9. As always, we’ll bring you our full and final verdict as soon as we can, so check back soon for our in-depth review. In the meantime, check out our first impressions of the iPhone 7 Plus’ new camera in our hands-on preview.