Apple is testing a brand new anti-reflective optical coating expertise for future iPhone cameras that might enhance the standard of images by lowering artifacts like lens flare and ghosting, claims a rumor out of Korea.
In keeping with the information aggregator account “yeux1122” on the Naver weblog, citing an organization supply inside Apple’s provide chain, Apple is taking a look at introducing new atomic layer deposition (ALD) gear into the iPhone digicam lens manufacturing course of.
ALD includes depositing supplies one atomic layer at a time onto a substrate, permitting for terribly exact management over thickness and composition. Its use permits producers to use very skinny layers of supplies onto semiconductor units, together with digicam elements.
By way of digicam lenses, ALD can be utilized to use anti-reflective coatings, which might help to cut back photographic artifacts like streaks of sunshine and halos that may happen within the remaining picture when a shiny gentle supply such because the solar shines instantly into the lens.
ALD also can cut back ghosting, a kind of picture distortion the place faint, secondary photographs seem within the picture, usually reverse a shiny gentle supply. This occurs when gentle displays forwards and backwards between the surfaces of the lens components and the digicam sensor.
As well as, ALD-applied supplies can shield towards environmental injury to the digicam lens system with out affecting the sensor’s means to seize gentle successfully.
The Naver weblog claims that the manufacturing course of can be utilized to a “Professional mannequin” in Apple’s “next-generation” iPhone lineup, which seems like a reference to 1 or each premium fashions within the iPhone 16 collection, though given the timing of the rumor, the chance that this methodology is being examined for subsequent 12 months’s iPhone 17 Professional fashions shouldn’t be discounted.
Each upcoming iPhone 16 Professional fashions are anticipated to incorporate a tetraprism lens with as much as 5x optical zoom – a characteristic that’s at the moment unique to the iPhone 15 Professional Max in Apple’s smartphone lineup. Apple normally launches its new-generation iPhones round mid-September.