Apple’s iPhone 17 and iPhone Air lineup includes a variety of camera upgrades, with the new Center Stage front camera a big highlight. In a new interview, Apple execs explain why it brought so much change to iPhone 17’s selfie camera this year.
iPhone 17’s selfie camera brings changes both to the capture process and output
Today BW Businessworld published a new article featuring interviews with two key Apple execs.
Apple’s camera software chief Jon McCormack and iPhone product manager Megan Nash talk in-depth about the new Center Stage front camera in iPhone 17 and iPhone Air.
The new camera is a huge leap over prior selfie cameras, and changes a lot about how you even use it. That’s in response to Apple seeing friction in the capture experience.
“We see selfie sticks; we see people switching to the 0.5 times ultra-wide camera; we see folks rotating the iPhone to horizontal; and we even see people handing the iPhone over to the tallest person in the group to get that maximum arm extension before they take a selfie,” McCormack explained. “What’s going on here is that our users are trying to make the camera work for them, but we knew that we could do better… what if the camera could just understand what you’re trying to capture and then make those adjustments for you?”
The execs say this effort has been years in the making.
In a separate interview McCormack remarks that the processing power and industrial design needed was only now made possible. “We’ve been wanting to do this for a while, and this is just the first year we can actually pull it off.”
“Years in advance, we were thinking about how this new front camera would need the high-speed Apple Camera Interface,” Nash explained. “So the A19 and A19 Pro use ACI to efficiently transfer data between the image sensor and the chip.”
Nash also highlights how the final product will be better than ever, not just the process of taking the photo.
For example, she mentions how keeping the iPhone in portrait orientation means subjects’ eyes will always be looking in the right place. With landscape selfies, that’s often not the case.
Similarly, selfie videos are better too. Here’s McCormack:
“Our goal with the iPhone’s camera is always to make it invisible,” McCormack said. That invisibility depends on stabilisation and smart framing, both now default behaviours with the front camera. “We achieved this by using the large overscan region on the sensor to enable this amazing stability…The larger field of view and high-resolution sensor allow us to use Action mode automatically every time you capture a selfie video. You never even have to turn it on, so you can walk, bike, or run and know that your video is going to be great.”
The new camera seems like the latest evidence of Apple using silicon advancements to try getting the technology out of the way for a better user experience.
What’s your experience been like with iPhone 17’s new Center Stage front camera? Let us know in the comments.
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