The iPhone 7 Plus's dual camera means true zoom is possible
Can a double camera make your pictures twice as good? Apple sure hopes so.
The upcoming iPhone 7 Plus will include a "dual camera," Apple announced during a media event in San Francisco Wednesday. It won't be included in the less expensive iPhone 7, but people who pony up for the Plus model will enjoy expanded photography features like an optical zoom and a special "portrait" mode.
It'll also kind of look like the back of your phone has mutated, with a large camera bump jutting out of that smooth body.
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Here are the details.
Improved zoom
Most smartphones use "digital zoom," which is kind of a cheat — the device basically just stretches the image out to make it look like you've gotten closer to whatever you're photographing. You can test this out for yourself by zooming in really close on an object with some fine detail or text printed on it. Notice how it's all pixelated and horrible-looking? Walk up to the object and take a picture without zooming and you'll see that the detail is much clearer.
The iPhone 7 Plus' dual camera will actually have an optical zoom. You'll be able to get a true, 2x zoom in your photos using the iPhone 7 Plus' 12-megapixel cameras. One of those cameras is a 28mm lens, the other is a telephoto lens.
Bottom-line: You'll get higher quality shots from further away.
You can actually get a 10x zoom with the iPhone 7 Plus, Apple said, but anything higher than 2x will require some software tricks. That said, the dual camera should mean crisper photos overall.
Better portraits
The iPhone 7 Plus will have a "Portrait" feature released as a software update "later this year." Apple said the Portrait mode will use machine learning to recognize faces in your photographs. The dual camera will then allow your iPhone to automatically blur out the image's background, creating a shallow depth of field effect that makes your smiling mug pop.
Damon Beres is an Executive Editor at Mashable, overseeing tech and science coverage. Previously, he was Senior Tech Editor at The Huffington Post. His work has appeared in Reader's Digest, Esquire.com, the New York Daily News and other fine outlets.
