Apple’s Two Lens System – Next Generation iPhone

At the Daring Fireball’s John Grubers’ most recent episode of The Talk Show podcast, it was revealed that Apple has been working on a two lens system, incorporating it in the next generation iPhone. Gruber states that `the specific thing heard is that next year’s camera would be the biggest camera jump ever and that it is not known what sense it makes but it is some kind of weird two lens system where the back camera uses two lenses and somehow takes it up into DSLR quality imagery’.

The purpose of utilising multi lens imaging system in making up for a smartphone’s small form is the recent development. HTC had unveiled in March, the One M8 with the `Duo camera’ setup using a secondary imaging sensor for depth data. Corephotonics, an amazing start-up which was profiled by Engadget earlier this year has a different approach.

It developed a dual lens module along with two distinct focal lengths, negating effectively, resolution drops connected with digital zooming. While one camera is used for wide shots, the other is used for close-ups and as an additional bonus; the system also provides spatial data for a 3D imagery due to its lens offset.

The Corephotonics System – Two Lenses 

The Corephotonics system, with two lenses, compares images which are taken from both, opting for the clearest pixels for the best overall photo and utilising a lens which only snaps black and white images thereby improving fidelity and enabling additional light. With little information on Apple’s actual progress for its next generation iPhone, it is difficult to say whether a two lens system would be working in the same way as mentioned.

 Nonetheless, the two lens cameras are a new frontier which manufacturers are exploring to improve image quality keeping the devices slim.The most popular camera choice on image sharing site Flickr has been Apple’s iPhone for a long time since Apple has embraced iPhone photography. Individual new iPhone iteration includes tremendous camera improvements with its `S’ updates bringing about the tremendous improvements.

For instance, with the iPhone 4s, Apple introduced an improved 8 megapixel camera which showed a large jump in quality of the iPhone 4 camera and with the iPhone 5s, the company included an improved sensor an aperture of f/2.2, which is a True Tone flash feature with better autofocus along with a new `Slo-Mo’ mode.

Impressive Camera Improvements – iPhone 6 & 6 Plus

The company has also introduced some impressive camera improvements in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus which include a new Apple designed image signal processor along with Focus Pixels though there is a possibility that even better camera improvements are being saved for the introduction of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus in the year 2015.

Recently, Apple supplier Sony had unveiled a new 21 megapixel `stacked’ sensor together with ultra-fast autofocus and 4K HDR video and while the 21 megapixel version would probably make its way in iOS devices, there is a possibility that Apple’s next iPhone would be incorporated in the upcoming Sony 16 megapixel sensor which would include the same features.