The 3D sensing capabilities on which the iPhone X’s camera relies for enhancing augmented reality features could be outdone by “more advanced” sensing reportedly planned for 2019 iPhones.
The iPhone X’s front-facing TrueDepth camera system is a strong selling point of the handset. It enables the device to accurately map the user’s face for Face ID and Animoji. However, two new reports from Economic Daily News hint at even better to come…
These Chinese-language news pieces from the Taiwanese site have been paraphrased into English by MacRumors, which suggests that we can expect a triple-lens system capable of stereoscopic imaging.
Here, with what is supposedly set to be the rear-facing camera, stereoscopic imaging would work by letting a couple of the sensors take images of an object from various angles. Then, through triangulation, the distance separating the iPhone and this object could be calculated.
The third lens would likely give an iPhone the ability to optically zoom by up to three times, as previously hinted two months ago. The latest iPhones allow for 2x optical zoom, but improvements in this area would let the user magnify a viewfinder image for longer before it starts blurring.
This more sophisticated camera system could also even further strengthen Apple’s hand in the augmented reality market. Last year, Apple launched the software framework ARKit that makes it easier for developers to add augmented reality features to their iOS apps.
Article image source: A triple-lens iPhone X mockup by Martin Hajek via iDrop News
