iPhone XI improves its camera at the cost of its design

As the issuing iPhone XI is drawing much closer, which is expected to be on 12 of September, the rumors and leaks about the true features of this new iPhone have caused a more temporary clamor. It is said in the leaks that the iPhone XI lenses will make use of the best camera techniques than any of its generation but the body design may be at the expense of a ugliest design.

Three cameras will be placed on the back of the phone, one for 10 megapixels and one for 14 megapixels. The third rear camera could also boost Apple’s augmented reality vision, as Apple has consistently talked up the power of AR on the iPhone and iPad. A depth sensing time-of-flight camera could do just that.  It is also rumored that the front camera will also equipped with 10 megapixels.  One of the rear camera will be made with wide angle, which will be supported by the OSI system. 

 Compared with the iPhone XR, the last generation, the next generation lens techniques improved a lot. On the iPhone XR, the single iPhone XI rear camera is 12 megapixels with a front camera of 7 megapixels, which can’t meet the users who has a higher requirement on taking photos. It would make sense for the new iPhone to have a tri-camera setup. Multi-sensor cameras have been a staple sight on Android flagships for the last couple of years, and the systems on the Galaxy S10 and Huawei P30 Pro we reviewed earlier this year are among the best we’ve seen. The new iPhone is a definite step up on the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max’s cameras, promising a better photo and video quality. 

As for the layout design on the back of the phone, it is a clumsy disaster to some degree.  The three lenses won’t be arranged vertically or horizontally. A large square is laid on the left corner of the back. Two lenses are  laid out into it horizontally, and the third lens is placed in the middle on the opposite side, which means the new phone has a notch on the front side and a patch on the backside, which is quite obtrusive to the eye. 

But rumors are always rumors. The real outlook of the final design has to be revealed until the issuing day. With the rising of Huawei and other Chinese smartphone suppliers, iPhone has come to a bottleneck of saturated market lacking of innovation. In order to revert the declining sales in China while maintaining high price, iPhone has to make efforts to step up its improvement on such basic configuration as cameras.