Users who just bought a new iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max might experience a peculiar issue: uncontrollable lens movement.
As demonstrated in videos and whines posted across the web, some users detected that their camera shakes and even creates an awful grinding noise when opening the camera on a third-party app, like Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok.
So far, it doesn’t look like the bug affects the iPhone’s Camera app, which might mean the issue’s related to the third-party app software rather than Apple’s hardware. Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok may need to push an update specifically for the iPhone 14 Pro. Even still, we don’t know what damage this does to the camera itself, which is a little unnerving when we’re talking about a $1,000 and up device.
Few reached out to Apple to see if it’s aware of the issue and also asked Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok if they’re working on a possible update to fix this.
The iPhone 14 Pro’s camera upgrades should appeal to photographers, filmmakers, and creative types on TikTok and YouTube. Apple made several significant improvements to the iPhone’s camera hardware, like adding a more meaningful, 48-megapixel sensor. The 14 Pro also uses Apple’s revamped image processing system, which is supposed to improve image quality in darker environments.
Factor in the new A16 Bionic chip, and you get features like a new video stabilization mode, the ability to film Cinematic mode videos in 4K, and higher resolution ProRaw photos. As a result, it has pictures and videos with better image quality when captured in medium- and low-light situations.
Apple YouTubers post their videos on Twitter showing how their iPhone 14 Pro Max camera vibrates when using Snapchat, making the photo completely blurry. You can also hear a buzzing or rattling sound coming from the lens that doesn’t sound good.
The iPhone 14 Pro holds three rear cameras: a primary wide-angle camera, an ultrawide, and a telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom. The lens on the primary camera has a wider focal length, ranging from a 26mm equivalent on earlier iPhone models to a 24mm one. It isn’t drastically different, but it helps get more of the scene into the frame.
The primary camera also gets a new, larger, 48-megapixel sensor. Though more megapixels doesn’t necessarily mean better photos, Apple divides the pixels into four groups and combines the four in each group into one larger pixel. This technique is called pixel binning, and it’s been used on Android phones for years. The results are brighter photos with less image noise (and, as a bonus, less noise-reduction blur).
Apple’s new imagining pipeline, the Photonic Engine, takes things further and helps improve color accuracy and protect details.
The primary camera takes excellent photos. The image quality and details look great for a phone photo. The most improvement came in medium- and low-light situations. The colors and textures look good. If you’re inclined, you can capture 48-megapixel images using the phone’s ProRaw setting.
When the iPhone 11 series launched in 2019, it included Night mode, which takes a series of images over a few seconds and combines them to create a brighter photo with better colors and less image noise. Three years later, on the 14 Pro, Night mode has blossomed even more. Capture times are much faster. Most of the time, Night mode needed just a couple of seconds to get a good photo in a bar or other dark locale.
I visited another Mission taco spot, Tacolicious, with some friends. (I warned you there were lots of tacos in this review.) The snap below was taken with Night mode.
The ultrawide camera fetches a new sensor with more focus pixels and a stepped-down f/2.2 aperture lens. All this counts up too many more brilliant ultrawide photos. In addition, the sensor, combined with the Photonic Engine, helps improve image quality in less-than-ideal situations. Admittedly, Ultrawide photos and videos are still a step down compared with those from the primary camera, but these improvements are welcome.