iPhone 11 Pro may have extra 2GB of RAM devoted to the camera

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  • Reply 21 of 23
    It doesn't make sense that 2GB is only reserved for the cameras, and the rest of the system cannot access it.
    People don't take photos 24/7.
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  • Reply 22 of 23
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,710member
    melgross said:

    If true, this seems to me to be a bit wasteful:   Reserving 2 Gb to a camera that, for most people, gets used less than 1% of the time.

    I guess one could make an analogy with GPU's using reserved (rather than shared) memory.  But GPU's get used a lot more than cameras.

    Could, perhaps, this extra 2Gb also be used elsewhere by the phone when not needed by the camera?
    I disagree. Cameras on modern smartphones are, as we saw from the presentation, one of the most important features. For Apple to make the phone as camera-like as possible, both in function and quality, a very high speed, and large buffer would be an advantage,

    of course, it may turn out that there is no extra RAM, which would make the cameras even more amazing, in the sense that they could do all of this without high speed buffering.
    Yes, Apple is really pushing the camera in their presentation(s).   But one has to wonder if that is because its one of the few things they have to push rather than because there is some amazing demand for it.

    In the pre cell phone era most people were quite happy taking snapshots on simple little, cheap camera.    Eventually a few moved up into medium grade 35mm cameras and fewer still moved into the SLR and higher mode.   I suspect the vast majority still simply  "snap a picture".

    If that is the case, then it is likely that that extra 2Gb seldom if ever gets put to the use Apple intended.  I would think that it would used more if made available to the GPU for gaming.   (But then, we don't really know.   Maybe it is).
    Everything is relative.  There’s a reason the iPhone is the worlds most used camera. You would think it’s an Android device, but apparently, it’s not. When my friends look T pictures we take, whether it’s an Android, or an iPhone, we often comment on how good the pictures have been getting. We aren’t talking about wall sized images. But we’re talking about excellent color, exposure, etc.

    People are learning, with digital, what good pictures look like. Maybe that sounds strange, but it’s not. Before, people often got prints back that were just terrible, and they accepted it because they didn’t know any better. But with digital, you see an image right away, so you can compare it to real life. That makes a difference. Everyone would prefer good looking pictures to bad looking ones, and now, we can have them. But people do notice black shadows, and burned out hilights, as they get used to better things everywhere in the image. So they begin to recognize more and more trivial, differences, and they want them fixed.

    i think I mentioned that in a digital camera, there is fast RAM used to catch photos taken in bursts. That’s likely one of the uses for it here.
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  • Reply 23 of 23
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,710member

    tmay said:
    melgross said:

    If true, this seems to me to be a bit wasteful:   Reserving 2 Gb to a camera that, for most people, gets used less than 1% of the time.

    I guess one could make an analogy with GPU's using reserved (rather than shared) memory.  But GPU's get used a lot more than cameras.

    Could, perhaps, this extra 2Gb also be used elsewhere by the phone when not needed by the camera?
    I disagree. Cameras on modern smartphones are, as we saw from the presentation, one of the most important features. For Apple to make the phone as camera-like as possible, both in function and quality, a very high speed, and large buffer would be an advantage,

    of course, it may turn out that there is no extra RAM, which would make the cameras even more amazing, in the sense that they could do all of this without high speed buffering.
    Yes, Apple is really pushing the camera in their presentation(s).   But one has to wonder if that is because its one of the few things they have to push rather than because there is some amazing demand for it.

    In the pre cell phone era most people were quite happy taking snapshots on simple little, cheap camera.    Eventually a few moved up into medium grade 35mm cameras and fewer still moved into the SLR and higher mode.   I suspect the vast majority still simply  "snap a picture".

    If that is the case, then it is likely that that extra 2Gb seldom if ever gets put to the use Apple intended.  I would think that it would used more if made available to the GPU for gaming.   (But then, we don't really know.   Maybe it is).
    People want to take "snapshots" that look great, so that they can send them to their friends and family. Apple nailed that process with the iPhone 11 models my making it easy to get artistic output. That 2GB for the imaging pipeline, if true, surely would benefit those people that do want the best imaging/video from their iPhone, and it does appear that there is in fact demand for that.

    All of that R&D that you claim doesn't happen at Apple because of buybacks, is why the computational imaging pipeline in the iPhone 11 models  makes it easy for the user to create great images.
    Sorry, but "snapshot" and "artistic output" are mutually exclusive terms.
    And, sorry too -- but Apple's R&D could be even as much or more than Huawei's if they didn't squander their cash on buybacks that provide no value to either society or the company.   But, we were talking about cameras before you tried to side track the conversation.
    Well, in a way, you’re right. But they’re not totally mutually exclusive. We do want pictures, with good color in flesh tones, sharp hair, nice blue (cyan, really) sky’s,  ice differentiated greens, and low light photography that looks more than decent. Yes, even with “snapshots”.

    Nd a lot of people use their phones for more artistic work with framing, deliberate distortion with an ultra wide, and other methods such as portraits. I use portrait modem for pictures of flowers and other subjects than people.
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