Blurring effect comes to iPhone 7 Plus with update
‘Pokemon Go’: inevitable cooling of mobile’s hottest property
ABy Anick Jesdanun
pple’s iPhone 7 Plus is getting a new camera capability — the blurring of backgrounds to focus attention on people or other objects in the foreground.
Apple first announced the “portrait mode” feature in September but it wasn’t available until the company released its iOS 10.1 software update Monday. It replicates an effect typically limited to larger cameras known as SLRs. While SLRs accomplishes this by controlling how wide the lens opens, the iPhone uses software adjustments.
Portrait mode requires an iPhone 7 Plus because it uses the phone’s two lenses to sense depth. Other iPhones have only one camera lens. The software update will still be available for other iPhones because it also comes with bug fixes and other improvements.
To use the feature, slide the mode at the bottom of the camera app to “portrait.” It’s between “photo” and “square.”
Then take a few steps back, as the feature taps the zoom on the iPhone 7 Plus’s second lens, meaning images are enlarged two-fold. The screen will guide you to move closer or farther from the subject, or in some cases, find a setting with more light. When shooting multiple people, make sure everyone’s the same distance from the camera to keep them all sharp.
Apple is calling this depth-effect feature a beta, which means it’s a work in progress. The iPhone will also save the unadjusted shots by default.
Huawei’s dual-lens P9 phone also has a similar feature. The update comes three days before Apple holds a product event in Cupertino, California, during which the company is expected to unveil new Mac computers.
Separately, Apple announced Monday that a Nike edition of Apple Watch will come out Friday, starting at $369. The runner-focused watch was announced in September, but no specific date had been given.
“Pokemon Go,” the augmented-reality game that lunged out of the gate in a monstrous burst this summer, has fallen back to Earth.
The mobile game from Niantic Labs, which lets users catch virtual demons that appear in the area around them, became the most popular game app in US history just one week after it was released in July.
However, while “Pokemon Go” remains the most-used mobile game for now, its weekly active user base has dropped from a peak of about 40 million shortly after launch — to less than 15 million by mid-October, data from research firm SurveyMonkey Intelligence shows. The firm collects data from an opt-in panel of over 1.5 million iOS and Android smartphone users in the US.
In addition, individual users are on average playing the game less than they did during “Pokemon Go’s” first month of release. In July, about 68% of all daily users were spending more than 3 minutes per day in the game, according to research firm Sensor Tower. So far in October, that number has dropped to 56%.
“This isn’t a massive decrease, but still indicates that players are less engaged in the absence of substantial new content being added to the game since launch,” said Randy Nelson, head of mobile insights at Sensor Tower.
In a bid to boost usage, Niantic this week is launching a special Halloween promo for “Pokemon Go”: from Oct 26 to Nov 1, users will earn double the amount of candy every time they catch, hatch and transfer monsters, and select Pokemon will appear more frequently.
There’s other evidence that “Pokemon Go’s” momentum has slowed in the last few months. On Sept 20, it was knocked off its perch as the top-grossing app in Apple’s US app store after a 74-day run at No 1. (Agencies)