That horrendous iPhone empurplement - you're holding it wrong ALL iPhones put a purple flare on photos they take, Apple has admitted, but only if they are held incorrectly. The tech giant has responded to complaints that snaps are marred by a thistle-tinted haze - but blamed incompetent fanbois rather than coughing to a hardware fault. Punters experiencing purple flares, hazes and spots …
Yep, iPhone, S3 or whatever. As though owning one or other brand of consumer kit says anything at all except that we are consumers.
Oh look - I've rooted my phone. Well, big deal.
If your mobile phone is (say) a Korean War-era valve radio plugged into a lead-acid battery lugged around in a tartan shopping-trolley, I'll let you call yourself an individual.
For the rest of us mugs, our phones come out of one or other doors of the same Chinese factory. Is that something to brag about?
"I've got an iPhone 5. I'm such a cool guy. Look, see how my Maps don't work and my Photos are crap."
There's a solution for that... its called ... wait for it...
wait for it ...
NOKIA! :-)
Yes, that's correct. They have both the best and most accurate maps and the best camera on a phone in the industry.
Nokia bought Navteq which actually produced the most accurate map data. (They used to supply Google until Google went out and bought a fleet of cars that not only captured map data, but also snooped on unsecured wi-fi signals... but that's a different story.)
And if you want to read a review of the Nokia camera phone... its somewhere on El Reg.
Note: I haven't played with one, nor do I own one.
Just saying.. . :-P
Well there is a simple answer to this. Go to DP Review and check out their review of the iPhone 5 camera. DP Review is the most authoritative, anal, detailed, scientific and expert camera review site on the web bar none and has zero skin in the phone OS fanboy bunfight. Their conclusion, it's excellent and the second best camera phone, only bested by that Nokia one, the model name of which I forget, that has been developed specifically to be a camera-phone with a f**k off excellent camera (and a damned innovative and useful product for a specialist market it is). And they comment on the "purple" flare, giving their expert opinion that it's expected of a camera that by its nature has to have such a miniaturised lens assembly and a perfectly acceptable trade-off to get such a good camera on a phone. So really this is just the perfect example of Leach doing her usual Apple bashing. Really its best to stick with things that really are bad like maps, or it reflects badly on the quality of the site.
Like you I have respect for DP Review and would not myself (since I do not IMO have the necessary expertise) dispute with their comments. The question then remains however, why did not Cupertino say something along those lines? In the aftermath of Job's famous comment during the so-called "Antenna-gate" affair anything that remotely resembled responding with "you're holding it wrong" was just begging for it. It would surely have been better if Apple had treated its customers as grown-ups and discussed the issue in the sort of terms DP Rev. used rather than giving the impression that their opinion is that their punters wouldn't have the problem if they were not "misusing" (so to speak) the camera.
Funny how the individuals that are upset about this are the very same individuals that don't own the device in the first place. Perhaps you could try being a little less sensitive.
Leach could try and, y'know, actually try and write instead of trolling, still I guess she get eyeballs on ads.
@Artic fox: Because unlike the antenna gate mess, this time "you're holding it wrong" is actually the correct answer. You're not supposed to do that; not with a phone, nor with a professional camera. You need to either shield the lens (the pro camera has gadgets for this, but your hand will do) or not have a light source in that position.
No matter how fancy the tool, if you use it wrong, you're going to get best results. And the poor tool gets the blame.
Indeed, of course, if that is in fact the sole reason for the problems that some Apple customers have had then no more needs to be said in that respect. However, my point stands with regard to what I posted. In terms of communicating with their enthusiastic user base Cupertino screwed up this time. I repeat, in the context anything that even sounded like "it's your fault" or "you're holding it wrong" was not exactly the smartest move they could have made. They are after all supposed to be (if I may be permitted the expression) marketing "geniuses"?
"You're not supposed to do that; not with a phone, nor with a professional camera. You need to either shield the lens (the pro camera has gadgets for this, but your hand will do) or not have a light source in that position"
You can if you want the light source in the frame, perhaps even with a lens flare. There are millions of such photos - professional.
What is going on with the iPhone 5 is not lens flare, is sensor blooming. Flare would be okay and is sometimes artistic. Bright purple blooming is the sensor being over saturated and overloaded, resulting in a blooming effect on surrounding sensor cells. Common to all sensors but most cameras these days, even small ones, have some compensation for it, usually including coating on the lens that filters out unwanted light frequencies that can cause these effects on sensors. Some cheap cameras have a similar effect that the iPhone 5 shows but they are the £20 kind.
Frankly, "to be expected" is a lame excuse from Apple as they are supposed to be striving for perfection and this is not perfection. Like Maps I wouldn't have though Steve would accept this. He'd rather stick with the previous generation of camera until they get it right. In the case of Maps and the war on Google, he'd even go as far as remove Maps entirely than have a crap Maps or Google's Maps.
@SuccessCase
The review on DP review that you refer to does not say that it is the second best camera phone. What it says (verbatim) is:
"The iPhone 5 is a fine mobile device, with an excellent camera. In qualititative terms it's not the best camera out there, and nor is it the best camera on a smartphone (the Nokia 808 has that honor, for now) but it offers satisfying image quality, some neat functions like auto panorama and HDR mode, and - crucially - it is supremely easy to use. It isn't much better than the iPhone 4S, as far as its photographic performance is concerned, but it isn't any worse (notwithstanding a somewhat more noticeable propensity towards lens flare)."
And they comment on the "purple" flare, giving their expert opinion that it's expected of a camera that by its nature has to have such a miniaturised lens assembly and a perfectly acceptable trade-off to get such a good camera on a phone.
So basically it's become too good to perform well when used by an average user.
It's like giving drivers a car with sensitive handling and finding that most will simply crash it at the first turn. You could say it's the vehicle's fault or blame the driver, but more truthfully it's a mismatch of implementation and target audience.
"Well there is a simple answer to this. Go to DP Review and check out their review of the iPhone 5 camera. DP Review is the most authoritative, anal, detailed, scientific and expert camera review site on the web bar none...."
I just did, and it finishes off by mentioning lens flaring...
"..but it isn't any worse (notwithstanding a somewhat more noticeable propensity towards lens flare)"
Which all in all makes you a bit of a twit.
>Go to DP Review and check out their review of the iPhone 5 camera
When I read it, it says stuff like:
"It isn't much better than the iPhone 4S"
"it gives you greater flexibility in poor light (i.e., you might actually get a picture now, where you just wouldn't with the iPhone 4S)"
"the iPhone 5's video capability remains largely unchanged from the 4S"
"The iPhone 5's sensor isn't magically more sensitive than its predecessor after all. "
"Looking at the crops of our subject's eye it is easy to see the affect of the iPhone 5's more aggressive noise reduction. The eyebrows and lashes are ever so slightly less well defined"
Accurate color representation is notoriously difficult to get in a camera that small. EU has been phasing out incandescent light bulbs since 2009 and US has just started to do so as well. The color temperature of fluorescent bulbs is a few thousand degrees cooler and it's entirely possible they aren't compatible with iPhone image processing algorithms, as those were written before the phase out. So this article is typical Apple bashing by el Reg. I bet if Apple introduced a feature that would only allow to take photos at angles that made for accurate color representation, people would still complain about it. Either make sure your light sources are compatible, use Instagram (where purple halo is considered artsy) or find yourself another phone. This isn't Apple's problem.
@solidsoup,
Unfortunately, you don't know what you're talking about. Color balance entirely unrelated to lens flare, and the notion that a camera might not "be compatible" with a light bulb is just extraordinarily dumb. Granted that it takes skill to achieve a good auto-white-balance, but it's not a terribly exotic skill because fluorescent bulbs have been around since the 1930s. But the symptom of an incorrect color balance is never bands of a new color (in this case, the purple) but rendering _all_ colors wrong.
So, yeah, this Apple's problem, particularly since their last iPhones didn't have the problem to the same extent.
> "The eyebrows and lashes are ever so slightly less well defined"
Wel, shit. When I'm grabbing a quick snapshot with the camera in my phone thing, it is sooooo important to get the subject's eyebrows well defined.
Pretentious twats. I'll bet they rave about $1000 gold-plated SD cards for that extra image quality as well.
>On a DSLR that's fine. On a phone camera, it's pretentious.
I'd agree if they weren't just comparing the cameras of previous iPhones with the iPhone 5. On any other product line, people would expect the camera in a newer model to produce more detailed images, not blurry ones - or for that matter purple tinted ones.
Most of the people complaining in official forums have upgraded from 4's to find the imaging much poorer. They're holding the camera the same way, they're taking the same kind of images. Apple's 'you're holding it wrong' and 'all smartphones cameras do this' statements don't even stand up against their own products.
"Wel, shit. When I'm grabbing a quick snapshot with the camera in my phone thing, it is sooooo important to get the subject's eyebrows well defined.
Pretentious twats. I'll bet they rave about $1000 gold-plated SD cards for that extra image quality as well."
So a CAMERA website should give a less detail review if the camera in question is a bit crappy?
I can understand phone review sites being a bit slap-dash when it comes to camera reviews, but DP are comparing it against other cameras.
If you like DP Review then you ought to love The Imagining Resource (http://www.imaging-resource.com/) which has the greatest innovation in camera reviewing, the Comparator. This interactive app lets you view test pix from any two or more of the cameras they've reviewed, side-by-side. A pixel peeper's wet dream.
The iPhone 5 has a thinner camera housing than the 4/4S, which probably makes matters worse as well: even an extra fraction of a millimetre could be enough to make the difference between stray light getting absorbed in the housing or hitting the sensor edge.
I'm sometimes glad of having a camera on my phone, but it's not a major feature for me: if I'm taking pictures where I actually care about the quality, I'll use my DSLR. If I found myself needing to take a shot like that, I wouldn't be too surprised to get lousy results from a phone camera - though I am surprised how obvious it is in the 5's case. I wonder if the black plastic surround from my iPhone case would make a difference?
"The iPhone 5 has a thinner camera housing than the 4/4S, which probably makes matters worse as well..."
These minor photo quality issues don't really matter in the long run: The photo is going to end up looking like a discoloured pile of shit the second it's inevitably uploaded to Instagram anyway...
So their best guess is that it is the synthetic sapphire lens cover that is causing this issue, the iPhone 4S used traditional glass... I don't know anything about applying the usual anti-reflective lens coatings to sapphire, but I would assume that applying lens coatings to glass is a more mature technology.
So, you have a trade off: traditional glass lens with coatings to minimise less flare, or a sapphire lens that doesn't get scratched unless you really go out of your way (a diamond ring would do it, but you really would have to be 'holding it wrong')
In the mean time, don't point your phone at a bright light- you can only get away with it anyway because digital cameras can fudge the contrast.
OK, agreed, improve it!
When I posted, I hadn't really awoken properly. It was a nice excuse to get Jimi in my head.
Thanks for the new word scansion (to me), of which I was unaware.
Perhaps with your tutelage I can become a master!
How about:
Purple haze all around
Don't know if I'm holdin' it upside down
Am I happy or in misery?
Whatever it is, Apple put a spell on me
?
"I'm just waiting for the Apple patent application for a unwanted light refraction prevention cover."
As it has been in existence for a very long time I think apple will even understand getting a patent on it will be a frivolous task...
but what I have no doubt is that future iphones will have some sort of light reflection and anti-scattering technology built in, even if it is just smoother glass to reduce inhomogeneities on the lens and give it a stupid name they can trademark so they can advertise apple produces as the only product with iHood(r)(tm)(cu)(nt)
"They could provide free rubber accessories for this.
They've done it before..."
I was wondering if Apple had really handed out contraceptives to crazed fanbois and girls, but then realized you were probably speaking of different rubber accessories, of lens hoods and such.
But contraceptives might be a solution long term solution too.
I'm sure there used to be this thing called photography, and that it used to have an advanced technology called a Lens Hood.
Unless Jobs was somehow cleverer on the old optics than the likes of Schneider and Zeiss, surely the i-cameras will inhabit the same universe as the rest of us, where pointing your camera at the sun gives natural lens flare.
Get used to it perhaps? Or call it i-flare?
or Apple Authentic Analogue Lens Flare? It's real and old-stylee and therefore "ANALOGUE". mmm,. smell the vinyl.
Nikon, who I tend to think know something about photography, or more relevantly lens design, can build devices that do not suffer from lens flare without a lot of effort.
Optically, lens flare is a result of partial reflections of optical elements (both the internal and external surfaces). It can be minimized by good design and great coatings, and it has nothing to do with whether optical element is part of a lens in front of a digital sensor or a piece of photosensitive material (aka "film") or an organic photoreceptive organ (aka "eye").
For grins, compare a pair of 1940s expensive binoculars with a contemporary pair. Even the Zeiss and Leica brands from back then don't stand up to the the average product of today.
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Having flares in your photo is typically a bad thing, worse than having flares in your wardrobe.
Most SLR lenses will come with a lens hood to try to eliminate it, often combined with a polarizing filter.
That's not to excuse the fact that iPhone is sensitive to flaring, but it is likely to be the result of the camera unit they are using, not the phone.
You make me laugh - yes a SLR may come with a lens hood. Now if Canon / Nikon suggested you use that it's wholly acceptable yet if Apple suggest using your hands as an improvised lens hood that is completely wrong.
They should just go and re-invent the laws of physics - lenses that cannot suffer from flare, batteries that never run out etc.
"Having flares in your photo is typically a bad thing, worse than having flares in your wardrobe."
The entire hipster culture seems to be about embracing the things that the possess that are shit,. and the lack of talent in areas and pretending it's cool and wonderful instead.
qv: Shitty photos with lens-flare, crap sense in clothes, crap sense in music, inability to do more than pluck intermittently at a guitar, bikes with no brakes, NHS glasses, hair cut by spasming chimpanzees.
To me this has got very much the same ring to it as why the original holding it wrong reception problem did not come to light until after the phones release.
The main reason being, I suspect, insufficient 'real world' testing.
You can put your phone on a stand in a special chamber and be happy with the reception and you can take nice pictures on test patterns till the cows come home. But its only in the hands of real people just using the device that this sort of things come to light.
Is this down to Apples near paranoia about stopping leaks that they are not able to do as much real world testing with their phones before the release that possibly other manufacturers?
Seriously? Do you weirdos genuinely believe that a device like this gets minimal testing and is cranked out the factory the moment the designer emails the plans to Foxconn?
1: The "Antennagate" bollocks was bullshit of the highest order: EVERY bloody phone suffers signal attenuation to some degree if you cup it in your hands. If humans were entirely transparent to electromagnetic waves, (f)MRI scans would be of absolutely no bloody use whatsoever. You can replicate the exact same attenuation on any damned phone. As I own an iPhone 4 myself, I have plenty of first-hand evidence that there's absolutely nothing wrong with its reception. If anything, it's better than most phones at getting a signal in poor signal areas. (As I also live in the Italian countryside, poor signal areas aren't that uncommon either. Although networks that support 3G, let alone 4G, are still shockingly rare outside of cities.)
2: Even amateur photographers know you're not supposed to point cameras at light sources, or even close to them if possible. Lens flare has existed since the invention of the fucking lens. It's normal. Christ knows what they teach kids in schools these days, but ten minutes on Google would have told these ignorant idiots what they were doing wrong.
The customer is not always right, not matter how much they think they are. There is no such thing as "foolproof" technology; only "fool-resistant".
"1: The "Antennagate" bollocks was bullshit of the highest order: EVERY bloody phone suffers signal attenuation to some degree if you cup it in your hands"
But SPECIFICALLY the way the antenna are on the outside of the iphone meant that holding it such that you fingers bridged the gap caused a drastic reduction in reception, hence the free bumpers to get round the issue. Yes all phones attenuate when you cup your hands around it but this was an instance where the design of the phone created a failure method that was found out immediately after the phone was released but which Apple were apparently unaware of from their testing. To me that gives the impression that they did not get enough people to test it before it was released.
I'd live to know how many people genuinely suffered from antenna gate and felt the need to return their phones - bet it was much less than 1%. At least Apple offered to take back any phones from anyone 'unhappy' and ALSO offered a free bumper. Basically to get the attenuation you would have to grip the phone like some crazed ape - in the REAL world all phones will get affected like that.
"I'd live to know how many people genuinely suffered from antenna gate and felt the need to return their phones"
Me too. I had my iPhone 4 from launch day right up until this Monday when my iPhone 5 arrived. I never had an antenna problem, even trying to replicate the problem I could barely make the signal drop, and I'm out in the sticks and barely getting 2 bars of signal. But when has reality ever bothered iPhone haters? And they say Apple fans are the ones living in a reality distortion field...
>I never had an antenna problem, even trying to replicate the problem I could barely make the signal drop
Easy to say in a forum. I've never handled an iPhone4 which doesn't exhibit this issue - and IMO neither have Apple, that's why they radically changed the antenna design in later models and handed out rubber bands.
>I could barely make the signal drop, and I'm out in the sticks and barely getting 2 bars of signal
The number of bars displayed has very little to do with the signal strength or viability as it was nobbled to convince you there wasn't a problem. It worked too.
>And they say Apple fans are the ones living in a reality distortion field...
Problem with living in an RDF is you can't see it - at least until now thanks to iPhone5 camera - it's kind of a purple looking aura.
"Even amateur photographers know you're not supposed to point cameras at light sources, or even close to them if possible."
Only an idiot would suggest that pointing cameras at light sources is wrong.
In fact it's a standard technique for special effects - silhouettes, halos, translucent backlighting, and others.
Pros do it deliberately all the time.
*Some* lens flare is normal and expected. *Too much* lens flare is a very bad thing.
Oh, and you're talking bollocks about antennagate too. Do other phones lose their cellco connection completely if you hold them normally while making calls?
No, they don't.
HTC Desire (s) , I mean.
Plus they have a non-metallic back cover, under which I presume the antenna lives somewhere, although the rest of the chassis seems to be sturdy cast metal.
There were some bad system boards (temp sensor - rebooting) but they replaced those boards for free.
Under EU regs you had up to 2 years from new to get that done. Maybe still possible anyway, I am sure they had big stocks of spare boards, which would be no use for anything else.
In the real world
foolproof == idiot-detecting
... but keep it under your hat.
BTW: resistance is futile.
Re: post icons
In the pursuit of ever-more-meaningful icons, how long will it be before c'tards are provided the means to compose, using two or more icons from the meagre collection currently available, an animated GIF of a few seconds duration to go along with their posts? Xmas is coming, and we've been good!
I suspect Apple do extensive testing - but in any design there are trade-offs you have to make - technically it's probably the best camera in a phone of it's size / weight - yes the Nokia 808 has more pixels but it's basically a huge lens (making it almost twice as thick)
Just wonder if reduction in photo quality (or ease of getting good photo quality) is an unintended consequence of the mad rush to have "the thinnesy phone ever" etc. Seems obvious that if you reduce the thickness of the phone and assume that the basic lens/ccd assembly can't be made much smaller then the result is that there is less scope to recess the lens to protect it from flare from extraneous light sources.
So its quite possible that the camera is inherently one of the best quality phone cameras (which I think is what a DP Review style test determines from series of stand photos in studio conditions to measure resolution etc) but at the same time is also much more difficult to use in practice.
It's by no means 'difficult to use' or even 'more difficult to use' - but still some people just cannot take good pictures - thinks like lens flare are basically unavoidable on such a device and technologies like HDR allow people to rescue what would have been a dreadful picture into something decent.
is only there because Cook doesn't seem like a very imaginative type, and in the absence of any other uber-coolness thought he could sell the 5 on the basis of More Less[tm] - being a production kind of a manager.
The reality is that most users wouldn't have minded an extra mm or two of thickness if it helped the camera work properly.
Personally I despise Apple and all their works, but they are not to blame for the fact that most pictures taken with most camera 'phones are complete dross.
I'm amazed that the complaints are only about lens flare, and not blurred images, thumbs in the way and digital noise, to name but a few of the ubiquitous faults with camera 'phone images in general.
This is because the possessors of this technology haven't, by and large, the faintest idea about photography; not one jot. They are of the same mindset as the drivers of the cars we see in the roadside ditches hereabouts on an almost daily basis - their cars have ESP and so they think they can drive them around any bend on any surface in any weather as fast as they like and the technology will just do everything for them. Well it won't, and 'phone cameras, even the iPhone's which is amongst the best, are still total crap compared to almost anything properly described as a camera.
'This is because the possessors of this technology haven't, by and large, the faintest idea about photography; not one jot.'
Yeah, they should be going to hell for wanting to just take simple snapshots of their family & friends doing people-type stuff and be forced to buy a DSLR prior to taking a picture of lunch to upload to Instagram.
There was me thinking this kind of po-faced arsery was limited to the Guardian forum!
Think people need a dose of common sense - the problem is the camera is so good people do use it - but it does not mean they know how to use it. I'm sure I could get plenty of impressive flare with my £1000+ SLR if I tried to take pictures in the same situations.
Basically it's a very good camera on a phone - probably as good as some mid-range compacts but you can't expect it to be the same quality as a dedicated SLR.
Dude, no-one cares how much you paid for the SLR. What counts is how much you paid for that glass tubular thing on the front. Oddly enough, an £100 lens behaves differently from a £1000 lens in exactly the same lighting conditions. This oddity goes a long way to explaining the difference.
Meanwhile, the iPhone 4s is less prone to this issue than the iPhone 5. Which rather implies that, using _just_ this criteria, that although the camera may be "so good", the lens isn't.
v. to pleasure oneself through the use of an Apple product.
Once Mike gets the new iPhone he's going to macturbate for a week straight.
If whilst macturbating to your new iDevice you do not get irrationally excited and pompous, you are holding it wrong.
(should be added to the register lexicon imho)
3/10. Must try harder.
There is a crucial difference between a "Mac" and an "iPhone": the former is Apple's branding for their traditional computers. The latter is a phone. Apple don't let their "Mac" branding anywhere near their iDevices, so your "joke" falls flat there, hence the mark above. It helps to do some research first, otherwise the joke simply doesn't work.
I own some Apple kit myself, so here's what I came up with:
It's surprisingly difficult to masturbate with an 27" iMac: You really don't want to be holding it the wrong way, or you'll be in for some seriously painful Apple-bashing!
See? Anti-Apple gags aren't so, er, hard. You just have to think different.
Thank you! Thank you! I'll be here all evening! Do try the fish.
Didn't they rush-hire some antenna engineers just after that, there were job adverts ... you would have thought it would be better to do the essential bits properly before releasing the phone though. Unfortunate that their competitors are phone manuffacturers who have some experience in that specific area.
@Tringle IDK what phone you have my friend, but my SGS2 takes fantastic pictures for what it is. The phone I owned prior to that, the HTC Desire, also took a credible picture.
In low light situations, obviously they struggle, but I have excellent indoor and outdoor shots taken with my SGS2. Some of the landscape snaps of Loch Awe bathed in glorious sunlight are particularly good.
This being Scotland, you have to take your chances with sunny weather, and I wouldn't have those cherished pictures if I didn't have my phone with me, as I certainly wouldn't have had my compact with me at that time.
Perhaps you are a long-in-the-tooth photographer who is tired of people settling for less than perfect photography, but you must remember, that the reason people capture photos is to remind themselves of good times, rather than chasing mythical 'perfect' photos.
There will always be a place for professional photography, of course, but for most folk, being able to pull out the phone on a day out and capture a special moment, is more than enough.
How I wish that, as a lad, me and my mates had had cameras with us at all times. It's one thing to remember some of the laughs we had, but I often wish there were more photos of what went on back then to complement the memories. It's the one thing Facebook is any good for.
Basically a £500 iPhone with camera is not going to replace a £500 SLR for quality / flexibility but then you can't browse the web or make calls on your Canon EOS can you...?
It's very handy to always have a camera with you - of course I would take my EOS if I wanted 'better' pictures but in reality the camera on the iPhone is that good there is less and less need to. There are also many shots that I would have lost if I did not have a camera phone and as cameras go the ones on the iPhone 4S / 5 are among the best you can get.
I'm with apple on this one... they admitted that there are shortcomings in short lens camera lens and sensor assemblies due to side light hitting the sensors and gave relatively simple work arounds to help users avoid it. Yes, it's probably worse in the iPhone 5 because the sensor is better and the package is shorter, allowing more incidental side light in and picking it up better.
The most viable fix is probably to lengthen the overall lens and sensor assembly but the result of this will make the camera thicker and there's no way that they'll be keen to do that as there are currently relatively few marketing-droid fluff points that can be flung around about the latest iPhones as it is. As a result they need to stick with the points they do have and not lose them... i.e. light, and thin - something the iPhone 5 does very well.
This is quite different to the cock up of having poor (laminate) insulation over the external antenna which allowed sweaty palmed people (or just those who don't have dry hands) to ground the antenna to the case. Blocking radio signals with body parts (such as the water in hands) is common to all mobiles, but does depend on where the actual antenna is. Mobile phone antenna tech has come on a long way since the earlier phones that sprouted 6" external antennas, but there's only so much they can do.
"The most viable fix is probably to lengthen the overall lens and sensor assembly but the result of this"
The 4S is 9,3mm thick and the 5 is 7,6 mm thick. The 4S hasn't got this problem (so severe). Do you really think that people would mind if the iPhone 5 was 1,7mm thicker? In fact they could have used that extra space to cram in a 2100mAh battery instead of this 1440mAm model... or, heaven forbid, a microSD card slot.
Hmmm, perhaps getting a Nokia 808 Pureview isn't such a bad idea at all...
To those arguing against phone cameras, the problem here, is not the fact that photos taken with phone cameras are of lower quality, it's that ones taken with the iPhone are of lower quality than other phone-based cameras.
You are using non sequiturs as misdirection to detract from the above fact.
I suspect you bought an iPhone 5 and are disappointed with it's apparent inability to take a decent photograph, so are therefore trying your best to delude yourself that all smartphone cameras take shitty pictures and that your purchase of an iPhone 5 was not a mistake.
Apple patents the most inane things around, much of it prior art.
Yet in searching AppPat there is not one thing about eliminating the purple rage by cupping their mobe in their hands or just holding it the wrong way.
Another undocumented feature, perhaps?
I wonder how some of the guys make the 'flares'
First, I like Apple, but my only iPhone is a 3gs that I revived with chines parts after my bro dropped it in the water.
I did do a quick search on google (you can do it to!) and did found some nice pictures, even taken straight into the sun like here : http://www.knowyourcell.com/features/1621140/iphone_5_camera_image_samples.html
Not saying the 'flare' doesn't exists though. But I don't think that people should throw away there iphone 5 just because they cannot take pictures towards a bright object.
I believe even Nasa has to take special counter measurements to take pictures of the sun!
I had one (iPhone 5) in my hand today. It sure is lightweight. It feels like a plastic toy compared to the 4S. The 4S looked and felt expensive but this one...
So the new 2013 trend is that expensive phones look and feel like cheap crap. Wrong or right, I think I'm not gonna hold one at all!
The purple hue is a dead giveaway. It may be possible to fix it or at least improve the situation in software by adjusting the light meter to exposure time calculation for bright light - assuming they aren't already at the minimum exposure time limit of the sensor. Or as others have said, use a lens hood.
This is probably a byproduct of being so secretive you don't test the product outdoors in broad daylight. The new campus will have a delightful open air central park where such things can be done without fear some fool will forget the prototype in a pub.
I think it can hardly be called that.
Apple has shipped a device that doesn't function as intended, they have then handled the PR around it "somewhat" badly and now it is being reported on.
Which bit do you exactly take offense too? I mean it must cause you offense to be considered trolling?
Is it the reporting you take offense with? Presumably it wouldn't be the device itself and i doubt anyone is really that bothered about Apple's usual attempt at making the best of a bad situation (blame the users).
No, i think it is more your various cries of "Trolling" only do more to highlight your obvious bias in this matter which is then reinforced by your need to shout down the author with cries of "Troll!".
I'm sure you would all like it if every article on reg was about how great the iPhone is but that's not going to be the case and i for one would prefer it to stay that way.
I'm gonna get downvoted mightily for this, but <http://news.consumerreports.org/electronics/2012/10/our-tests-find-purple-haze-problem-isnt-limited-just-to-the-iphone-5.html>, which is NOT an Apple-friendly site, says that just about all phones in that class have a haze of some kind. Some are apparently worse than iPhone 5s. And, yes, they point out that the iPhone 4S was one of those phones which had a worse haze. One wonders how no-one noticed this until someone actually tested it...
And, yes, fandroids, among the phones tested and shown to be as bad as iPhone 5s were the Samsung Galaxy III and the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx.
Ah, well...
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