As Apple inches closer to the launch of the iPhone 13 series, more details about the upcoming phones keep surfacing. As per a fresh report from supply chain-focused news portal DigiTimes, the entire iPhone 13 family will come armed with sensor-shift image stabilization tech that has so far remained exclusive to the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
“The VCM makers mainly deliver shipments for Android handsets in the first half of the year, but such shipments are expected to be surpassed by those for iPhones in the second half, given that all new iPhones will feature the sensor-shift OIS (optical image stabilization) function, the sources said, adding that the makers have been told to raise capacity by 30-40% to meet strong demand for iPhones.”
However, this isn’t the first time we’re hearing about the stabilization tech expanding to the whole iPhone 13 family. DigiTimes and ETNews separately reported in January about all iPhone 13 series phones making the upgrade from Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) to sensor-shift image stabilization. Needless to say, it is a major improvement to the imaging capabilities of Apple’s next smartphone series.
Alleged render of an iPhone 13 series phone (Image Credit: Svetapple.sk)
The key difference between OIS and sensor-shift image stabilization is that the latter involves shifting the whole image sensor inside the camera using electrical actuators to compensate for hand movements. In the case of optical image stabilization, only the lens element inside the camera module is moved to negate hand movements and not the whole sensor. In fact, iPhone 12 Pro Max marks the first that this technology was miniaturized and used on a smartphone.
There are a lot of other upgrades in tow as well. As per analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the iPhone 13 Pro Max will come armed with an F/1.5 wide-angle camera that has a larger aperture compared to what we saw on its predecessor, allowing users to capture more detailed shots in low-light scenarios. Moreover, the entire iPhone 13 series will reportedly come fitted with a 7P lens assembly for the wide-angle camera.
More importantly, the iPhone 13 Pro will feature a 120Hz LTPO OLED display, while the notch has also been shrunk after rearranging the FaceID hardware and repositioning a few sensors. Leaked renders suggest that the design will more or less remain the same, save for a small increase in thickness, while the dual-camera setup on the vanilla iPhone 13 and its mini variant now has diagonally-aligned camera lenses.