Beyond camera technology upgrades

The California Streaming Apple event that took place last 14 September was — unlike the famous California Dreamin’ song — utterly unmemorable. The only two things that piqued my interest have been the new 6th-generation iPad mini, and what has been upgraded in the iPhone line. There is a third item, actually, which is what happened to the strongly rumoured Apple Watch Series 7 redesign, but maybe that’s a story for another piece.

The event felt unexciting. As I tweeted afterwards, these pre-packaged events are starting to feel repetitive and uninspired. The structure remains unchanged, somewhat predictable, and most presenters seem more concerned with delivering their script than trying to really make you feel their enthusiasm for what they’re showing you.

Even when it comes to one of the most crucial moments — talking about the innovations in the iPhone 13’s camera technology — the presentation was adequately put together, but failed to captivate me. It failed to make me go like Man, I can’t wait to check out these new iPhones once they’re available at the Apple Store! On YouTube, people like Dave Lee, Marques Brownlee, and Peter McKinnon, all did a much better job at communicating why these camera improvements and new features are kind of a big deal.

For me however, this is going to be another year without upgrading my iPhone. It’s not that I don’t deem the iPhone 13 worthy of an upgrade, far from that, but I’m sticking to my anti-notch design stance. When the iPhone X came out, I purchased the traditional-looking iPhone 8 and said that my next iPhone upgrade would happen when Apple manages to remove that ugly black thing on the top of the display. According to several rumours, apparently this will happen next year with the iPhone 14, so I’m hopeful.

Anyway, in the meantime I’ve been reading a fair amount of iPhone 13 reviews and watching video reviews. The consensus is that it’s an incremental upgrade compared with the iPhone 12, and that the two major improvements regard camera technology and battery life. Both of which are great things… provided they are a priority for how you use your phone.

Agreed, battery life matters pretty much to everyone, but cameras are a different story. You’re probably thinking, Come on, Rick, you know that everyone cares about having great cameras in their phones. For a lot of people, smartphones are the only cameras they own.

But hear me out. Let’s put aside people like me, camera enthusiasts who prefer shooting with traditional cameras and don’t really care about their phone’s camera capabilities. There are a lot of regular folks who, granted, have no other cameras apart from their smartphones and use their smartphones as the handy point-and-shoot camera that’s always with them. They aren’t professionals, they probably know very little about photography, and they just want to have a tool ready to capture moments when needed.

For people like these, the camera technology in older iPhones like the first-generation SE or the iPhone X is good enough to meet their needs. If they upgrade is often because their iPhone has reached other limits, like storage or battery life. Yes, shockingly there are people who buy 32GB iPhones, fill them with photos, videos, and documents, know nothing about backups, and when their iPhone is full, well, time to get another one. I have rarely, if ever, heard a non-tech person talk about wanting to get a new iPhone because it has a bigger camera sensor, because now you can take real macro shots, or shoot more cinematic videos, or because now Night Mode is even better, and other assorted photo-video nerdery. The attitude is more like, Now my current iPhone is getting old, it’s time to buy a new one; I heard it takes better photos and battery lasts longer, so hey, that’s a bonus.

The point I’m trying to make here is not to belittle the camera improvements Apple keeps delivering year after year. I’m perfectly aware of their magnitude and usefulness. Instead, my question is: Is camera technology becoming the only defining characteristic of smartphones in general, and the iPhone in particular?

Because I’m starting to feel that, apart from camera technology, there’s very little going on with smartphones in the innovation department. I’m not counting foldable display technology here not because I don’t think it’s innovative per se, but because for now it doesn’t really advance the smartphone category when it comes to new applications (in the sense of ‘uses’, not ‘apps’).

If you make the thought experiment of removing camera technology upgrades from current phones, where are the practical advancements? That’s why those people who are not into photography are perfectly fine using older phones and don’t really feel pressured to upgrade, not even when their phone stops receiving system software updates. If you remove the camera aspect in an iPhone, there’s little a 2016 iPhone SE can’t do compared with a current model.

It seems, however, that enough people are interested in having good cameras in their smartphones, otherwise Apple wouldn’t be so hell-bent on pushing camera technology in the iPhone, year after year. It matters so much to Apple that it has become more important than the overall industrial design of the device itself. Because let’s be honest, the design of the latest three or four generations of iPhones may be ‘iconic’, but that camera array on the back of the device is a sore sight, and the very image of an extra part that is bolted on the machine, design be damned. One of the rare instances where Apple prioritises function over æsthetics.

And, for now, Apple’s approach is rather typical of Cook’s administration: find what appears to be the gold vein, and extract all the gold you can until there’s nothing but debris. It certainly makes sense from a mere business and financial standpoint, but to me it’s disappointing: is this the grand plan for the iPhone? Make it become the best camera you have with you at all times, and that’s pretty much it?

I can’t help but think that Jobs would have recognised this kind of stagnation and worked towards creating something to stir things up instead of iterating, iterating, iterating, and offering ‘faster horses’ after ‘faster horses’, if you know what I mean. He probably would have posed the problem of what we can do next with these phones, and the answer Much better photos and videos than last year would probably have left him wanting more. Okay, maybe I’m projecting a little here: it certainly leaves me wanting more.

But wait, wasn’t I the one against change for change’s sake? I was, and still am. Here, however, I’m talking about progress, reflecting on it somewhat theoretically, if you like. This is a broad discussion, but to avoid wandering off topic too much, I simply think that wanting to make smartphones become excellent pocketable cameras, while being a respectable goal, at the same time feels a bit like a waste of potential of what is already a supercomputer in your pocket.

Yes, yes, I know, computational photography! Apple is leading here, they’re ahead of the competition, and so on and so forth. I’m simplifying here, but essentially computational photography is something created to take advantage of processing power and software to circumvent the hardware limitations of having small camera sensors, small lenses, and little physical space to operate within the chassis of a smartphone. And from what I’ve seen so far, the goal of having such advanced computational photography is to make your iPhone take photos as closer to reality as possible, especially when it comes to low-light photography.

I’m not arguing its usefulness or Apple’s innovative efforts on this front, at all. The philosophical problem I have with that is that most of photography is not about reproducing reality with 100% fidelity. Every time I look at the photo samples Apple shows while touting the iPhone’s ever-improved camera system, the neutral, high-definition, surgically precise nature of such samples doesn’t appeal, inspire, or move me at all.

I want to see something happening in this field that pushes regular people beyond just using their smartphones to take snaps, chat, play Candy-Crush-Saga-like games, check maps, scroll Instagram feeds, watch YouTube and TikTok videos, and little else. Are smartphones destined to become just great cameras that can also be used to make phone calls, and that’s the end of the line, or is there maybe some new territory to explore beyond camera technology upgrades?