How far behind is the iPhone 7 Plus, which was launched more than two years later than Honor in terms of dual cameras?

After Cook took over, Apple's innovation has indeed become less and less.

The new generation iPhone 7 has been on the market for quite some time, but technically, the only innovation worth people's attention seems to be the upgraded dual camera on the iPhone 7 Plus. In fact, the dual camera cannot even be regarded as Apple's real leading innovation.

If we look at the development history of smartphones in the past two years, as the first generation of dual-lens smartphone of the Honor brand, the Honor 6 Plus released in December 2014 has undoubtedly become the leader of dual-camera smartphones. In 2016, Honor has once again returned to the dual-camera camp with many dual-camera products headed by the Honor V8.

If we compare the Honor V8 and the Apple iPhone 7 Plus, it unexpectedly becomes a competition between a dual-camera pioneer and a technology follower several years later. Apple is no longer the revolutionary who had foresight in the smartphone era, and the dual-camera technology it bet on is not as good as it seems.

Why the dual-camera iPhone challenges people's aesthetics even more

Frankly speaking, after the evolution of the iPhone 6/6S, Apple has provided a solution to the "white band" problem of the antenna, which was initially the most criticized, that is more acceptable to most people on the iPhone 7. Unfortunately, as for the protruding camera, there is still no sign of improvement.

Especially for the iPhone 7 Plus that uses a dual camera, a core purpose of adopting a dual-lens design is to obtain more light input by increasing the number of lenses. While obtaining better photo effects, the design can also avoid the problem of protruding appearance caused by the lens module being too large.

The design advantages brought by this lens solution are most evident in Honor's dual-camera mobile phones. Whether it is the Honor 6 Plus two years ago or the Honor V8 two years later, they can be presented to the world with a flat back.

On the other hand, the lens part of the iPhone 7 Plus, which also has a dual camera, has expanded directly into a rough raised surface, compared to the raised but at least delicate metal ring of the iPhone 6/6S Plus. One cannot help but sigh that the Apple that once took both aesthetics and technology into consideration is really gone forever.

Dual lenses, choose one? Apple's "fake dual camera"

In fact, in the Android world where hardware freedom is more tolerant, dual-lens mobile phones are no longer a new concept.

In principle, the black and white + color dual lens adopted by Honor V8 represents the most common and reasonable approach for dual-camera mobile phones. That is, the color lens is responsible for acquiring the color of the image, and the black and white is responsible for outlining the details, and finally they are combined into a high-quality photo with accurate color restoration and complete details.

Relying on two 12-megapixel cameras with different characteristics at the back, the Honor V8 also brings more powerful low-light shooting performance and picture purity, because the black and white lens is a fully transparent sensor without a filter, and the amount of light entering when taking pictures is 4 times that of ordinary color sensors. Therefore, in terms of imaging, the dynamic range of the picture can be improved and noise can be reduced.

What is unusual here is that both cameras on the back of the iPhone 7 Plus are color lenses, but one is a wide-angle lens and the other is a telephoto lens.

At this point, it is not difficult for us to find that the dual-camera solution of iPhone 7 Plus is actually using cameras with different characteristics to functionally supplement the zoom requirements of mobile phone photography. In actual tests by all parties, although the switching of the dual lenses is handled by Apple very smoothly and difficult to detect, in most cases, iPhone 7 Plus only has one camera working.

Not only that, the optical zoom that Apple has been promoting is nothing more than instantly switching from one wide-angle lens to another telephoto lens when the focal length changes from 1x to 2x. This is completely different from the true optical zoom achieved by professional cameras by moving the lens forward and backward through a motor.

Therefore, we can call the iPhone 7 Plus a "single-camera phone with dual cameras". If you really hope that the dual cameras can bring substantial improvement to the phone's photo performance like the Honor V8, then Apple will indeed disappoint you this time.

The iPhone 7 Plus's dual camera is more like a half-finished product

Why do I say this? Because this is something that Apple itself acknowledged at the press conference.

The large aperture photography achieved by dual-lens technology can achieve an extremely outstanding background blur effect. This is the most tangible change for dual-camera phones. Especially after several generations of iterations, the dual-camera technology on the Honor V8 has become quite mature in controlling background blur. You can even manually adjust the aperture value over a large range in the camera interface to accurately control the degree of background blur.

Unfortunately, the iPhone 7 Plus that is now available to users does not support this feature. According to Apple's official news, if you are not a geek willing to install the beta version of the system for your Apple phone worth seven or eight thousand yuan, it will take until the end of the year at the earliest for Apple to push the official version of the new iOS system that supports the camera background blur function.

However, even with the addition of a large aperture and background blur functions, the camera functions that Apple iOS can provide are still quite monotonous unless with the help of a third-party APP. In comparison, in terms of the fun of taking pictures, for example, Honor's EMUI has long been combined with dual-lens features, adding streamer shutter, food mode, super night scene, etc. The Honor V8 can easily capture star trails, which is difficult for the iPhone 7 Plus to do.

There is no doubt that, supported by Apple's strong brand appeal, the new generation of iPhone has once again become a hot-selling product in the mobile phone market almost solely by virtue of the change in body color. However, facts have also proved that the situation where Apple iPhone will fall from the altar and even be surpassed by its competitors is not far away from us.

The iPhone 7 Plus, which was more than two years later than Honor in the dual-camera aspect, has indeed been left quite a distance behind. This gap is due, on the one hand, to the fact that domestic mobile phone brands, led by Honor, have accelerated the pace of technology research and development and exploration of user needs. On the other hand, the iPhone, which has been invincible for nearly 10 years, is increasingly showing signs of fatigue, and is no longer proportional to its high price.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.