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A camera, an iPod, a phone, an internet communicator – are you getting the camera bump yet?

If Steve Jobs were announcing the iPhone as a new product today, that famous introduction would be about it being four devices in one, not three.

In 2007, it was a widescreen iPod, a revolutionary phone, and a breakthrough internet communicator. In 2022, he’d be adding “an intelligent camera” – and that might even have been the first thing mentioned …

I admit it: I was one of the first to complain about the iPhone camera bump when it first materialized, in the iPhone 6 – and was pleased to get rid of it when I went from the 6s to the original iPhone SE.

The camera bump on the iPhone 6/6s annoyed many of us, who thought Apple was taking the thinness game just a step too far. The SE looks miles better without it.

Today, with the iPhone 14 camera bump expected to be even bigger and thicker, it’s still getting complaints. 3D artist Ian Zelbo put together the above images (on the left) to show how much the bump has grown over the years.

Majin Bu posted renders that instead focus on the expected thickness of the bump, comparing the iPhone 13 Pro Max and a dummy model of the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Macworld describes the look as “more bump than camera.”

This remarkable image shows how big the iPhone 14 Pro’s camera bump will be – more bump than camera.

The camera is getting bigger. And a bigger camera means a bigger bump. Anyone who upgraded from the iPhone 12 Pro to the iPhone 13 Pro already got a bigger bump, but the iPhone 14’s camera array is expected to get much bigger, stretching across more than half of the phone.

In addition, a series of tweets from Majin Bu on August 5 compared the iPhone 13 Pro Max and iPhone 14 Pro Max and showed just how far the camera bump appears to protrude.

Initially, I thought it was crazy to have the camera protrude just to make the device about 1mm thinner.

It really seemed to me that, in the iPhone 6, Apple was prioritizing an inconsequential bit of extra slimness over a pleasing design.

Today, it’s obvious that my idea of just making the iPhone only slightly thicker to keep the cameras flush was a nonstarter. It would turn today’s iPhone into unwieldy bricks. Apple knew where it was headed, and that was toward beefier cameras that had to protrude from the casing.

Sure, from a purely aesthetic viewpoint, I would still prefer flush cameras if it were technically possible. But I accept that’s not the case, and now choose to look at it from a different perspective.

Instead of viewing it as a smartphone with an annoyingly non-flush back, I instead view it as a remarkably flat camera.

That’s not much of a stretch for me, because my iPhone became my primary camera as of the iPhone 11 Pro. That was the point at which I ceased carrying my mirrorless camera for both social events and even some travel.

The iPhones cameras continue to get better and better. It wasn’t many years ago that the idea of using an iPhone for macro photography would have seemed crazy, yet here we are.

Same with night photography. Granted the iPhone isn’t yet there for all night shots, but for most of them, it does the job remarkably well.

Who could have imagined taking nighttime portrait photos with a phone? Yet, again…

And RAW photos on a phone? Yep.

Of course, we’re still only in the early stages of seeing how far computational photography can go in terms of overcoming the inherent weaknesses of a tiny sensor. In video in particular, there’s still a very long way to go! But the amount of progress Apple has made over the past few years is extraordinary, and that pace of development looks set to continue at the same kind of pace – or better – for some years to come.

So I think it’s time we got over the camera bump, stopped complaining about a non-flush phone, and started appreciating an almost-flat camera. What do you say?

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Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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