It seems Apple might try to put variable aperture cameras on its iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max. This is reported by Korea’s well-regarded tech news publication ETnews. It’s quite an exciting venture, and Apple fans are already showing a lot of interest in it. Here’s what the report tells us.
On the iPhone 14 Pro series and beyond, Apple has kept the main cameras to f/1.78 aperture — all static in nature, and no moving parts on the sensors, except maybe the OIS magnetic gimbal. The new type of sensor they are working on can change that aperture on demand, as the software or the user wishes.
The concept of aperture is pretty simple to follow. It’s actually the size of the lens covering that decides how much light should cross through the lens and fall onto the sensor diodes. This makes images brighter or dimmer, which, in turn, impacts the amount of detail captured in one shot.
A variable aperture sensor can enlarge or contract the lens opening, almost like our pupils dilate in brighter and dimmer environments. This saves the camera of the Apple's latest iPhone model from overexposure in daytime shots or underexposure in nighttime photography.
The variable aperture has another side perk. This non-static camera opening can also give you control over the depth of field, since you are basically controlling the lens size itself. iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max may have better bokeh and naturally blurred backgrounds if they used a VA sensor.
Luxshare ICT and Sunny Optical could be Apple’s secret partners. They may be designing the actuators to control the aperture size on the iPhone 18 Pro series. Ming-Chi Kuo said the same thing in his previous leak, by the way, so this bit of information could actually be true.
This may seem ground-breaking stuff to some fans, but it’s actually a tried-and-forgotten technology, which Samsung used ages ago on Galaxy S9 and S10. But there were simply too many moving parts on the camera to keep up with production costs. So, most companies had to move on from this idea. Let’s see how well Apple implements the variable aperture on its iPhone 18 Pro lineup.
