iPhone 13

Much of the discussion around the iPhone 13 has been around the camera, as it was the part of the device that got the most notable upgrade. Apple’s VP of camera software engineering Jon McCormack and VP of camera hardware engineering Graham Townsend gave British GQ an insight it how it was made.

“The planning has to start about three years ahead, because that’s when we actually fix the specification of the silicon,” says Townsend. “So, for instance, the sensor gets defined at that point and the A15 Bionic processor is also frozen. That’s when we have to begin to talk with Jon and predict the experiences that we want. Obviously when we designed the new ultra-wide lens, we were going to deliver macro photos. But how is that going to work both in stills and video?”

[iPhone 13: How Cinematic Mode Was Made]

Cinematic mode was one of the big new features in the iPhone 13. In a new interview with Techcrunch, Apple VP Kaiann Drance and Human Interface Team designer Johnnie Manzari explain how it was made.

“We knew that bringing a high quality depth of field to video would be magnitudes more challenging [than Portrait Mode],” says Drance. “Unlike photos, video is designed to move as the person filming, including hand shake. And that meant we would need even higher quality depth data so Cinematic Mode could work across subjects, people, pets, and objects, and we needed that depth data continuously to keep up with every frame. Rendering these autofocus changes in real time is a heavy computational workload.” The A15 Bionic and Neural Engine are heavily used in Cinematic Mode, especially given that they wanted to encode it in Dolby Vision HDR as well. They also didn’t want to sacrifice live preview — something that most Portrait Mode competitors took years to ship after Apple introduced it.

Rebecca Isaacs has written a helpful explainer about the iPhone 13’s 120Hz display and why it matters for customers.

One of the major selling points of this technology is that it allows you to dynamically vary refresh rates based on what you’re doing. For instance, basic web browsing can be handled at an undemanding 10Hz to 60Hz, while gaming can take advantage of the full of 120Hz. The Apple Watch can even hit a low of 1Hz with the always-on screen.