New patents reveal that Apple is working on a custom image sensor for the iPhone, leaks suggest it’s already being tested internally.
If you’ve ever felt like your iPhone camera isn’t quite up to snuff, you’re not alone. I recently wrote about how picking the right iPhone Pro model to buy is so difficult, and one of the reasons is due to the way Apple handles its Smart HDR technology. While this technology isn’t solely responsible for photos not looking as natural as they should, we live in a world of computational photography, which is an algorithm that decides what’s important to focus on when capturing a photo.
While Apple can mitigate some of the issues with better processors, high-end lenses, and new algorithms, there’s a key component that could make a future iPhone camera better than professional cinema cameras: a custom image sensor.
What’s more interesting is that a patent filed last month titled «Image Sensor With Stacked Pixels Having High Dynamic Range and Low Noise» could already be in development, and unlike some of the company’s most controversial creations, this one is actually expected to see the light of the day.
