The iPhone 7 Plus will be the most exciting phone in Apple’s lineup this year when it comes to camera performance. The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will not offer the same camera experience, even though both models are going to feature better cameras than their predecessors.
Some people have speculated that the iPhone 7 Plus will have a dual-lens camera that will help Apple deliver a DSLR-like experience. Now a new leak may shed more light on the upcoming phablet’s major camera update.
DON’T MISS: Working iPhone 7 Plus captured on video for the first time
According to @the_malignant’s sources, the iPhone 7 Plus will have an LG G5-style 12-megapixel dual-cam module, featuring a driver chipset from Analog Devices and LinX technology.
#iPhone7Plus according to one source, LGG5-style LINX 12 mpx dual-cam module has a driver chipset provided by Analog Devices
— The Malignant (@the_malignant) August 31, 2016
LinX Imaging is a camera company that Apple bought for around $20 million, according to a report from April 2015. The technology LinX was working on is believed to power the dual-camera setup in the iPhone 7 Plus.
In June 2014, LinX announced that it wanted to put SLR image quality in our pockets with the help of new multi-aperture camera modules that would fit inside smartphones. “The camera modules are nearly half the height of a standard mobile camera and are capable of creating stunning color images and high accuracy depth maps,” the company wrote at the time.
Here are some of the advantages of its products, as listed by LinX before it was acquired by Apple:
- A larger sensor requires a longer lens. Therefore, by replacing one large sensor with two or more smaller ones, we reduced the height of our device by a factor of 1.4 to 2
- Sensitivity to light increases by a factor of 3 by using a monochrome sensor
- Noise levels are dramatically lower
- The effective array camera resolution is similar to the single aperture camera in high light
- Performance and image quality in low light are extraordinary
- Allowing a fast exposure at indoor standard lighting conditions of 100-200 lux which assures crisp images free from motion blur
- The multi-aperture camera creates a real-time, high-quality distance map
The company also told us what features to expect from products that would incorporate LinX cameras:
- Automatic background removal
- Refocusing
- High-quality control of autofocus in video mode when one of the cameras is equipped with autofocus (range finder camera)
- Augmented reality
- 3D object modeling
- Distance and Sizing of objects
- Biometric 3D face recognition
Again, these are quotes from a press release that hit the web almost a year before Apple bought LinX. Apple has a massive camera team of its own, so we can only hope that LinX’ tricks have gotten even better since then.
A video explaining LinX’s camera tech follows below.
