The iPhone 11: What Does The Third Rear Camera Do?

While Apple is putting the iPhone X on sale again at a discounted price and cannot get rid of the FaceTime bug, we are looking forward to seeing what the iPhone 11 series has to offer.

A prototype of triple camera setup on the 2019 iPhone

It’s only early 2019, and we’ve already known a bit of the 2019 iPhones’ look. A lot of rumors say that the iPhone 11 series will bring a design similar to its precedent that came out last year. Furthermore, the iPhone 11s will have a smaller notch on display and, Apple is likely to replace the lightning port with the USB-C one on this series.

Besides, all we know is that the phone will feature three rear cameras, so what does that mean? Fortunately, Bloomberg has recently published a report that may give us some suggestions. Accordingly, Apple initially was developing 3D cameras for the iPhone rollout in 2019, but it then had to reschedule that plan for 2020 iPhones.

Another prototype of triple camera setup on the 2019 iPhone

The upcoming camera’s scanning range could reach up to 450 meters, a much larger distance than the True Depth cam system that is currently used on the phone’s front for Face ID. The report notes that the existing True Depth camera system can scan up to 50 centimeters only.

The ability to scan at a more extended range allows the phone to have more AR features as well as improvements in portrait mode in terms of photos and possibly videos. Most importantly, Bloomberg says that the third lens in 2019 iPhones may be used to capture a broader view field and Apple will only offer this upgrade to the higher-end Max model.

Also, Bloomberg’s report also suggests that Apple is working on a new dark mode for the iPhone, which may be similar to the MacOS. Dark mode is likely to make screentime at night much less jarring and look exceptionally beautiful on the OLED displays of the iPhone X series that generates true blacks.