iPhone 11 Pro High Efficiency vs Most Compatible

[iGeneo]

I seem to recall seeing something recently that stated that you could always use HEIC and when sending a file, iOS it would automatically determine the best format to send

 

[Tsepz]

I seem to recall seeing something recently that stated that you could always use HEIC and when sending a file, iOS it would automatically determine the best format to send

This makes sense. Not once has anyone told me they are having a hard time viewing my pic, then again I mostly use WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, GMail and Outlook depending on who I am sending to.

The people who I talk to on iMessage mostly have iPhone 8 and higher.

 

[HEK]

This is Apple's way of making older devices unpleasant enough to use to temp you to buy a newer one. They've always done this since forever

Lots of companies do same thing. I tried mounting my new Ford Explorer snow tires and rims on my old Ford Model T. THEY WOULDN’T FIT !

What the heck Ford.

 

[pika2000]

More and more Android also supports recording in HEIC, so after a while it wouldn’t matter as it is supported by everyone.

 

[KiraYamato]

I had a problem where photos would look blurry in camera roll which could be fixed by zooming in and out. Solutions online referred to turning off settings in icloud regarding the photo app but it didn’t help.

What finally did help was turning of high efficiency and switching to most compatible.

 

[cynics]

If I receive a HEIC photo in Messenger that my iphone 6s cannot open, then it turns out that I can contact the sender of the picture. They can change photos they take back to JPEG format, by following these steps. Go to Settings > Camera. Tap Formats. Tap Most Compatible. Once they do this, they can resend the picture to me and it will arrive as a JPG file that my iphone can view.

I had this issue.

Are you experiencing this issue from a particular person or everyone? Keep in mind ALL iPhone 7 and later are capturing in HEIF unless the user went into settings and changed it.

My issue was with one particular person who was on a version of iOS (iOS 12.x.x) that had "glitch" and didn't automatically convert the image to jpeg when sending iMessage. It was his work phone and he didn't care to upgrade to the latest version of iOS. Once I got him to upgrade to a later version of iOS 12 at the time and sign out and back into iMessage he can capture in HEIF and it will convert it to jpeg when sending it to me automatically.
[automerge]1573362381[/automerge]
While not 100% for the most part HEIF and JPEG captured from an iPhone will look very similar on a standard dynamic range display (even on a higher dynamic range display more often than not). That isn't always the case but the majority of the time the average person won't be able to perceive a difference and even if they did that won't be they will prefer the look of the HEIF over JPEG. The results will come down to the iPhone version (7 vs 11), lighting, subject, display its viewed on and finally preference.

Apple leaned more toward the space saving attributes of h265 vs capturing more detail (there is only so much detail an phone camera can capture). This makes the photos much smaller.

That said, capturing in HEIF is preferred. Its still lossy however its more advanced which can result in smoother coolers, higher color depth, and features specifically helpful for sophisticated post processing techniques that an smartphone can benefit from.

 

[cynics]

This is Apple's way of making older devices unpleasant enough to use to temp you to buy a newer one. They've always done this since forever

Admittedly unpleasant, its a fairly isolated problem. HEIF photos captured on an iPhone 7 or newer should be automatically converted for older iPhones.

I think something we need to keep in mind before jumping on apples case about this is 4-5 year old iPhones and 6-7 year old Macs had quality compatibility with these formats (h265) before brand new competing smart phones and computes on Windows 10. Most video editing software didn't even have support (software transcoding) for it and that is what they specialize in.

I've been working with HEIC on my 2013 iMac for a couple years. Using quality transcoding software (my iMac doesn't have hardware support for h265) got me no where near what Apple integrated into MacOS and QuickTime. Videos that would play at 2 fps with compression artifacts now play smooth as silk.