One of the key differences between the iPhone XR and the iPhone Xs is in the camera. The iPhone Xs features dual cameras while the iPhone XR features a single camera, but yet for the most part the cameras all have similar functionality, including Portrait mode where the iPhone XR relies largely on software to mimic the same effects.For the most part the single camera gets the job done just fine, but as some have noticed, it’s not as effective when it comes to snapping photos of non-humans, such as pets. The good news is that this is a software limitation that could potentially be overcome, as noted on Reddit (via 9to5Mac) by the Halide developers who discovered that there is enough depth data that could allow Portrait mode on the iPhone XR to snap photos of non-humans.
According to the developers, “And would you know it, we have Portrait Mode working on pets! We think with some more tooling, we’ll be able to ship a version of our app that enables portrait mode for all sorts of things. It seems it’ll be a bit more ‘temperamental’; in some settings it won’t work if there’s not enough variance in relative distance of objects, but a can of soda water on my desk worked just fine.”
While it seems that third-party apps will be able to take advantage of it, the potential good news is that Apple could further tweak and improve on the camera software so that users won’t have to rely on third-party apps, but whether or not they do remains to be seen.