At Least One 2019 iPhone Again Rumored to Feature Three Rear Cameras

BY Evan Selleck

Published 28 May 2018

With this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference ready to start just one week away, most of the attention is being paid to what’s right around the corner. Most, anyway.

According to a new report from the Economic Daily News, which cites an analyst report from Jialin Lu out of Deutsche Securities, Apple is indeed planning on featuring at least one of its 2019 iPhones with a triple camera sensor on the back. Lu states Apple will go down this route so that it can enable advanced 3D sensing in the rear cameras on an iPhone, as well as better zoom capabilities.

This new note echoes another report regarding the future iPhone’s capabilities, suggesting the rear camera setup will make even more in-depth augmented reality situations possible. It would be similar to the implementation within the TrueDepth camera system that’s present on the front-facing camera in the iPhone X.

As for the zoom capabilities, the triple camera setup would likely mean the 2019 iPhone could feature a 3x optical zoom. That would mean users would be able to zoom in up to three times and not see a drastic decrease in image quality. Right now, the furthest an iPhone can zoom is 2x, which is capable in devices like the iPhone X, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone 7 Plus.

The 2019 iPhone lineup has also been the focus of another rumor, suggesting that Apple may have figured out the TrueDepth camera sensing technology in its front-facing camera so much by next year that the company is able to remove the “notch design”. It has also been rumored that the 2018 iPhone lineup could see the notch shrink just a bit, as Apple works towards removing the notch altogether.

Our Take

The idea that Apple will introduce a trio of rear cameras on a future iPhone doesn’t seem crazy. We have already seen the idea come to fruition with the Huawei P20 Pro, so it’s not completely unheard of. And if Apple sees an actual advantage to the idea, then it seems pretty likely. Of course, as long as that advantage just isn’t boiled down to “top-tier iPhone has three cameras, mid-range with two, and ‘low-end’ with one”, then that’s hopefully a good thing for all of us.

[via Economic Daily News]