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Why did iPhone 7 Plus have to go with this?

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Javed Anwer
Javed AnwerOct 02, 2016 | 10:42

Why did iPhone 7 Plus have to go with this?

There is a trend that is emerging in the phone market. Even as the cameras inside these little devices get better, they are also running into the walls of physics. There is only so much you can do in a device that is so small.

But to fix the problems that users face, and to enable better photos from the phones, the phone makers are trying some noble approaches. One of these is the dual-camera trick.

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What started as a gimmick around a year ago has become some sort of serious feature this year with even Apple jumping on the bandwagon with its iPhone 7 Plus.

So are the two rear cameras really better than one? It actually depends on the approach the phone maker has taken. But for now the answer is more or less no.

When the two rear cameras appeared in mobile phones, they were more of a gimmick. The idea was to use one camera for solely capturing the depth field and then allow people to change the focus point after the images have been clicked.

This means if you were clicking the photo of your friend, you could change the focus after the image has been clicked, highlight her and blur the background. This would make the photo look better.

galaxy-s7-camera-645_100216102822.jpg
Samsung Galaxy S7. (Photo credit: theinscribermag.com)

But since then, this other camera has been used for various purposes. The iPhone 7 Plus, for example, uses this second camera to offer consumers a telephoto lens with 2X optical zoom for better portrait photos.

The LG G5, meanwhile, goes in the other direction and uses its second camera to offer consumers a wide angle lens for better landscape photos.

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But the better approach is the one taken by Huawei, which uses the second camera in its Honor P9 and Honor P8, which will be launched soon in India, to capture more details in monochrome and then combine those detail with whatever main camera captures, to create an image that has finer details and better contrast.

But even as they are interesting and innovative, the dual camera set-ups in phones, including the one in the iPhone 7 Plus, don't yet compellingly score over the good single camera in phones.

This is the reason why the Huawei Honor P9, although good, can't beat the Huawei Nexus 6P that has one camera but with better photography hardware.

The same is the case with the other dual camera phones. So next time when you see dual cameras in a phone, keep in mind that this feature looks good on paper, but it doesn't beat the one good camera that phones likes the Galaxy S7, HTC 10 and Nexus 6P have.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)

 

Last updated: October 02, 2016 | 10:42
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