iPhone 6’s Camera Issues Could Be Attributed To iOS 8

In an earlier post, we covered how Apple had advanced their camera technology over the years in the different iPhone versions, leading to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus which seemed to have the best camera yet. Or does it? According to the folks at Tom’s Guide (the sister site to Tom’s Hardware), it turns out that there are some slight issues.

One of the issues has to do with an odd purple/magenta tinge that has been added to the photos once it has been taken, which they speculate could be due to auto white balancing issues. As you can see in the image above, the iPhone 6’s photo on the left has a slight tinge to it, versus the photo on the right taken by the Samsung Galaxy S5.

They also noticed that photos had more obvious chromatic aberration compared to competing devices. We should note that chromatic aberration does manifest itself even on professional grade cameras and lenses, although better quality hardware helps keep it to a minimum where it won’t drastically impact the final result.

Now before you’re put off by the new iPhone 6 handsets completely, Tom’s Guide found that this was a software issue rather than a hardware one. They tested photos using the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s models running on both iOS 7.1.2 and iOs 8 and found that the issues were less pronounced with iOS 7.1.2, thus suggesting that maybe this could be a software problem that Apple could potentially fix with an update.

Tom’s Guide has since shared their findings with Apple who is now currently investigating the issue. It is unclear if and when Apple will release a fix to help correct their auto white balance algorithm or camera software in general, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled for more info. In the meantime has anyone else noticed these issues in their iPhone 6 units?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones
Tags: iOS 8, iphone 6