In the days before smartphones, if you wanted someone to take a photo of you in front of the Eiffel Tower or something, you first had to give them a little impromptu lesson in using your camera. An ambitious new iPhone update reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurmanbut not yet confirmed by Apple, it seems like it would make the default camera app so customizable that it could bring that kind of confusion back to smartphone photography, but only if the phone owner decides to set it up that way.
Gurman, whose reports come as always from anonymous sources, writes that the impending updates “should appeal to professional users.”
He physical side button that brought up camera controls starting with the iPhone 16 invited users to venture into the device’s more advanced features, and this app appears to be the next step for users who really like that button. From the looks of it, the Camera app will become its own little ecosystem of sub-apps, called widgets, according to Bloomberg, that add new control options to “the top of the interface.”
It seems as if advanced smartphone photographers could make the Camera app their own, allowing them to have their favorite widgets ready at all times, dismiss widgets they don’t want to see, or simply leave the Camera app as is.
The widgets, according to Gurman, will vary from feature to feature and will be in an “Add Widgets” tray that can be opened from the bottom of the interface. So for taking photos, there will be widgets that control things like exposure and depth of field. The widgets come with what seem like euphemistic difficulty settings: “basic,” “manual,” and “settings.”
and you know that Controls button in the top right corner of the Camera app Does that look like an application queue? Gurman says it will be relocated just to the right of the shutter button.
In addition to the new pro-level features, Gurman writes that you’ll be able to toggle previous modes like photo and video to a completely new mode called Siri mode. Apparently, Siri mode can be used for things like translating text within the camera app or pointing your phone at a flower and finding out what type it is.
