The ‘iPhone 13’ Is Getting These Three Incredible Camera Upgrades (+ More)

Video Portrait Mode

Confirming a previously vague rumour, Gurman notes that Apple will, in fact, be adding Portrait Mode video capture to the iPhone 13, allowing iPhone videographers to take advantage of the same bokeh effects that they’ve long enjoyed for photos.

Apple debuted Portrait Mode with the iPhone 7 Plus back in 2016, although it didn’t actually arrive in user’s hands until a later iOS 10.1 software update. Since then, it’s become one of the most popular iPhone photography features.

Apple has improved upon it vastly over the years, adding the ability to edit Portrait Mode photo depth after the fact in iOS 11, plus a new Portrait Lighting feature with the 2017 iPhone X and iPhone 8 lineup. Then, the 2019 iPhone XS/XR lineup added real-time depth control, and brought a limited Portrait Mode to the single-lens iPhone XR, eliminating the need for a second lens for the first time.

In all of this time, however, Portrait Mode has been limited to taking photos. During this year’s iOS 15 unveiling, however, we got a hint that Apple was expanding it into the realm of video when it announced Portrait Mode for FaceTime calls.

While you’ll need an A12 Bionic-equipped iPhone to take advantage of the feature, it definitely seemed like it could pave the way to allowing users to record videos in the Camera app in Portrait Mode as well. After all, if it can do this in real-time with a FaceTime video, capturing it while recording should be a cinch.

If Gurman’s information is correct, however, this won’t be an iOS 15 feature, per se, but rather something exclusive to the “iPhone 13” — and maybe even only the “iPhone 13 Pro.” It’s unclear, however, if it requires something special about Apple’s upcoming A15 SoC or whether the company is artificially limiting it to the newest iPhone models as a selling point.

According to Gurman’s sources, however, it sounds like the new “Cinematic Video” Portrait Mode recording may be a bit more sophisticated than what would be required for FaceTime calls. For one, it’s going to need to work on both the front and rear cameras, and it will likely have to deal with a much wider range of variables than just somebody’s face. As with photos, you’ll also be able to change the amount of blur after recording.

ProRes Video

Building on last year’s revolutionary introduction of Dolby Vision HDR recording on the iPhone 12, this year Apple is upping the game for pro videographers with support for the ultra-high-quality ProRes format.

ProRes is used by professional video editors, and is the native format preferred by Apple’s Final Cut Pro video editing suite, and much like shooting RAW photos, it gives video editors much more control during post-production.

The downside, of course, is that it produces absolutely massive files — one minute of 60fps HD ProRes 422 video comes in at 2.2GB, while 4K/60fps video clocks in at 9.5GB/min. The lower quality ProRes 422 LT only reduces those numbers by about 30 percent.

Needless to say, this isn’t going to be something most people will want to use, but it definitely makes the case for a 1TB iPhone this year, since the largest capacity iPhone 12 Pro Max on the market won’t even hold an hour of ProRes 4K/60fps video.

In essence, however, ProRes will do for videographers what ProRAW did for photographers on the iPhone 12 Pro last year. Similarly, we think it’s a safe bet that this one will also be exclusive to the Pro models.

Intelligent Filters

The “iPhone 13” is also expected to gain much more powerful AI-driven filters that will apply changes precisely to objects and people across the photos, rather than just generically covering the entire image.

The information suggests that the filters themselves will actually be similar to what’s been available since 2013. Users will be able to choose filters for warmer and cooler colour temperatures, more dramatic looks with deeper shadows and more contrast, plus “a more balanced style for showing shadows and true-to-life colours with a brighter appearance.”

With computational photography at work here, however, the filters will produce much more natural looks. For example, the temperature filters will adjust colours while keeping whites neutral, and the emphasis will be on adjusting the subjects more than the backgrounds.

What Else? ‘Relatively Modest Upgrades’

According to Gurman, the camera improvements will be the biggest things coming to this year’s iPhone lineup, with only “relatively modest upgrades” otherwise.

As we’ve been hearing for a while, we’ll see the same four models as last year, with the same overall designs and sizes — a 5.4-inch “iPhone 13 mini” and 6.1-inch “iPhone 13” accompanied by the 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch “iPhone 13 Pro” and “iPhone 13 Pro Max” models.

By all reports, pricing will also be the same as last year, with the “iPhone 13 mini” starting at $699 and the “iPhone 13 Pro Max” going to $1,099 for the base storage configuration.

What’s less clear, however, is whether those base storage configurations will increase. The iPhone 12 models started at 64GB, while the iPhone 12 Pro began at 128GB — the first time that became the minimum storage capacity for any iPhone model.

Despite this, however, the standard iPhone 12 started at the same 64GB level that’s been the norm since Apple last doubled it from 32GB back in 2017 with the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, which had only been increased the year before when the iPhone 7 began selling with a 32GB minimum. As hard as it is to believe now, the iPhone 6s started at a paltry 16GB of storage.

The addition of ProRes support could force Apple to up its game, at least with its Pro lineup, but it’s unclear whether that just means an increase in the higher-end capacities, as it did with the iPhone 11 Pro, which came in 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB configurations, or even the addition of a fourth 1TB model. Some sources are even disputing whether we’ll see a higher capacity model, but again we think that the addition of ProRes support will pretty much demand it.

Beyond that, however, it sounds like there isn’t else exciting to come to this year’s iPhone lineup. Gurman makes no mention at all of his earlier prediction that in-display Touch ID might be coming, which means we’re not getting our hopes up on this one. He also pointedly avoids any mention of what the new iPhone may be called, which means we don’t even know for sure that it will be the “iPhone 13” — it sounds like “iPhone 12s” could still be in the running.

Either way, we won’t have much longer to wait. Apple is expected to announce its newest iPhone lineup sometime next month, and based on past history, we can probably expect it to happen closer to the beginning of the month than the end.