Take Incredible Night Shots with LiDAR
The iPhone 12 Pro isn’t actually Apple’s first device to gain a LiDAR Scanner—that distinction goes to the latest iPad Pro released last spring—but it is the first device to actually make much more practical use of it.
While the 2020 iPad Pro did offer up a significantly improved camera system over prior iPad models, it still paled in comparison to even that found on the iPhone 11, and naturally the iPhone 12 has lapped that one entirely. On the iPad Pro, the LiDAR Sensor was therefore added entirely to power augmented reality experiences, some of which were very cool for use in certain fields like interior design and medical research, but generally of little interest to most iPad Pro users.
With the iPhone 12 Pro, however, the new LiDAR Scanner gains the much more practical purpose of aiding in actual photography by allowing depth calculations to be used to power autofocus and Portrait Mode photography.
This means that for the first time, you’ll be able to use the iPhone’s Portrait Mode at night or in other similarly low-lit conditions, as the LiDAR Scanner can take the measurements that previously had to be done optically in a well-lit environment. Further, the ability to use LiDAR to measure distances also means that autofocus will now work much faster, again especially in low-light conditions.