It’s quite obvious that the new iPhone Air’s key selling point isn’t the camera, but that doesn’t mean it can get away with mediocre image quality.
The only camera on the back uses a familiar 48MP, 1/1.56″ sensor coupled with an f/1.6 aperture. Apple promises lossless, optical-like zoom quality at 2x to compensate for the absence of a dedicated zoom camera. We’ll reserve the judgment on how well that works until the review is complete and we’ve done a detailed analysis across all our test scenes, but for now here are some 1x and 2x shots.
iPhone Air: 1x • 2x
The selfie camera is entirely new, however, and we haven’t seen it before on an iPhone. Apple has an unorthodox approach with the selfie unit, as it uses a square sensor, which produces 18MP shots in both portrait and landscape orientations. And that enables the Center Stage feature, which keeps you centered during video calls and group selfies.
The new selfie also gains OIS and a wider 20mm lens – here go a few samples from it.
iPhone Air selfies
As for video recording, the new iPhone Air and its peers introduce Dolby Vision-compliant 4K video recording at 60fps and Spatial Audio during video recording. You can even adjust the sounds after a capture. For example, you can reduce the ambient noise, similar to Samsung’s Audio Eraser feature.
Stay tuned for our full review!