Photos & Camera
Smaller files, better quality
THere’s great news when it comes to taking photos and videos with your iOS device: On the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, video is captured in HEVC format. This is the next-generation successor to the H.264 format you’re probably already familiar with after years of it being used in Apple’s and other manufacturers’ video cameras, and for content delivery from places like the iTunes Store. Sometimes referred to as H.265, the HEVC format allows for up to twice the compression compared to H.264. This is fantastic news if you bought an iPhone 7 with a low storage capacity and often find yourself running out of space.
The underlying technique used in HEVC also applies to photos, so your iOS devices will no longer shoot in JPEG but High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF – pronounced “heef”). You’ll get the same sort of reduction in size as video, too, though Apple has stressed these are still high quality formats; though they’re more heavily compressed, that’s due to the algorithm’s efficiency rather than more data being discarded.
There’s no need to be concerned about what this means for compatibility with older devices; when you use AirDrop or email to send media to someone, or post to Facebook or another social network, your device will fall back on a format those destinations can use.
The iPhone 7 Plus’s portrait photography mode, which uses the device’s dual-lens camera to apply a depth-of-field effect to images, is enhanced in iOS 11 to deliver improved performance in low light. Overall image quality is also improved, with support for optical image stabilization, the True Tone flash, and high dynamic range (HDR).
Additionally, expect third-party apps to start doing their own clever things with the depth information captured by the 7 Plus’s camera, as iOS 11 provides developers with a method that enables access to that data.