It has been claimed one of the iPhone 17 models could come with a variable aperture lens, which would allow for more control over the depth of field.
The report comes from The Information (picked up via 9to5Mac), and it claims two people with “direct knowledge” as the source.
With Samsung's latest phones having launched, and Google's Pixel phones only a few weeks away, all eyes are starting to turn towards Apple's iPhone models. There have been a flurry of rumours surrounding what the iPhone 16 models will bring to the smartphone party, but it's not this year's models that the newest report talks about.
Instead, it's fast forwarding over a year to talk about the iPhone 17, which isn't expected to be announced until September 2025. Still, according to a report from The Information (picked up by 9to5Mac), one model of the iPhone 17 series could include a variable aperture lens, allowing for better control of depth of field.
The information (no pun intended) is said to have come from "two people with direct knowledge of the feature", though it is worth noting that given how far we are away from the launch of the device in question, things could very well change in that time.
Still, if the report is accurate and Apple follows through, it would be the first time the iPhone has offered variable aperture. The current models have a fixed aperture, but like Google's Pixel phones, it's a wide one at f/1.6. This is because smartphone camera sensors are small and they need to allow as much light as possible into the sensor to avoid noisy images.
The problem with a fixed wide aperture is that if you get too close to a subject, like a flower or a person, you won't get much of it or them in focus. A variable aperture would allow you to get more detail in focus, even when shooting close to a subject.
That said, the average person will likely not understand all the technical details involved here and just want their phone to take a decent photo, a lot of which comes down to processing in smartphone photography.
Variable aperture isn't new in smartphones either. Samsung offered dual aperture on its Galaxy S9 and S10, before ditching the feature for its Galaxy S20, while Sony offers it on its Xperia Pro-1 smartphone, designed for photographers.
For now, nothing is confirmed for future iPhones and while photographers will likely appreciate the extra control if a variable aperture is added, for many of us, being able to take a Portrait shot on iPhone and adjust the background blur afterwards will likely remain enough.
