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Protruding camera...why a big deal?

S

Seanm87

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Oct 10, 2014
2,252
4,568
I see a lot of reviews/people talking about how ugly the protruding camera is. Am I the only one that's noticed the samsung Galaxy s5 has a protruding camera as well? No one seems to care/comment about that. It's not like it sticks out so much it causes any kind of problem. I personally like the coloured ring round it.

Anyone else noticed this?

back-s5.jpg
 
Seanm87 said:
the samsung Galaxy s5 has a protruding camera as well? No one seems to care
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And this surprises you on a mac forum?

The reason a protruding camera on the iPhone 6 has created a stir here is because we've been systematically trained to expect progressively smoother and thinner products that seemingly defy physics.

I would imagine that the protruding camera was a major bone of contention for Ive & Co, but that they finally succumbed to the laws of optics in order to get a thinner phone into production in time.

The protruding camera is a ripple the reality distortion field.
 
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Plenty of phones have had protruding cameras in the past. The difference between the iPhone 6 and the Galaxy however is that the iPhone's camera is at the very edge of the device, and offset. This makes it very annoying when you set it down on a flat surface. Then you consider that iPhone users have become accustomed to a flush lens on every preceding model; seems like a step backwards. Plus Apple is all about user experience, and this sort of dampens that.

Not necessarily a deal breaker in practice, since most people will be using a case on the 6 anyway. But it's still annoying.
 
In the many discussions about the camera on the new iPhones, it has indeed been brought up that the cameras on other smartphones protrude as well. Personally, I don't like that design element on the iPhone as I think its sloppy. It's not great on the Samsung Galaxy S5 either, but at least in that case it is centered in the middle top area and the body slopes up to the camera.
 
when i set my iphone 5 on a table, it dosnt concern me. the force of the slight drop is distributed over the entire surface of the phone.
when i set my iphone 6 on a table, i feel like im hammering the table, using the camera lens as the hammer head. it feels like i might smash the lens at some point.
 
"the samsung Galaxy s5 has a protruding camera as well"

Two wrongs don´t make a right..
 
As a photographer I find the furor over the camera nub to be hilarious. Lenses have to be big to gather light. The fact that the tiny lenses in iPhones can produce passable images at all is a minor technological miracle. That the cam on the 6 series sticks out a little surprises me not at all and if Apple is serious about photography going forward we should expect this trend to continue and accelerate. Bigger lenses and sensors will be necessary for better image output. Simple as that. You just can't make a camera that's the size of a pencil eraser make increasingly better pictures. You hit a ceiling that can only be broken through by making it bigger.
 
I've never understood what the big deal is either. And maybe this has been mentioned but didn't an Apple patent surface a year or two ago that specifically had a protruding camera ring for the sole purpose of allowing a lense to clamp onto the camera ring?

I have always just assumed that at least part of the protruding camera is for that purpose but haven't seen it mentioned anywhere
 
james92se said:
I've never understood what the big deal is either. And maybe this has been mentioned but didn't an Apple patent surface a year or two ago that specifically had a protruding camera ring for the sole purpose of allowing a lense to clamp onto the camera ring?

I have always just assumed that at least part of the protruding camera is for that purpose but haven't seen it mentioned anywhere
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It would make sense. The built in lens is five elements with a sapphire cover. It could take a two or three element snap on tele or wide without losing much image quality.
 
I think its just surprising considering that Apple are typically perfectionists when it comes to the designs of their products. The protruding camera seems a bit lazy and half-assed by comparison.
 
Surf Monkey said:
As a photographer I find the furor over the camera nub to be hilarious. Lenses have to be big to gather light. The fact that the tiny lenses in iPhones can produce passable images at all is a minor technological miracle. That the cam on the 6 series sticks out a little surprises me not at all and if Apple is serious about photography going forward we should expect this trend to continue and accelerate. Bigger lenses and sensors will be necessary for better image output. Simple as that. You just can't make a camera that's the size of a pencil eraser make increasingly better pictures. You hit a ceiling that can only be broken through by making it bigger.
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Most people, including myself, would be perfectly fine with making the phone a bit thicker. Not only would it make the camera flush it would allow for a larger battery. We don't need to go thinner anymore.
 
Jimmy James said:
Any protruding camera is an annoyance. This issue certainly isn't limited to Apple.
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Is it though? I mean, it depends on what your prioriries are for the device, right? If you don't use the camera much it might be an annoyance, but if you do use it a lot and you want the best possible images out of it then a small protrusion is a small trade off.

See, it all gets back to the same bottleneck: light. You can only get so much light through a small hole. If you want a better image the ONLY way to get it is to put a bigger lens in front of the sensor. Without more light no amount of pixels or software processing is going to make any difference. So, if you want better images you need a better lens and better lenses are bigger. There is no way around that. Never has been and never will be.

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Gmcube said:
Most people, including myself, would be perfectly fine with making the phone a bit thicker. Not only would it make the camera flush it would allow for a larger battery. We don't need to go thinner anymore.
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The phone is thinner as a usability issue, not to mention as a market deferentiator. Additionally, as demand for higher quality image output increases the depth of the lenses required will exceed the depth of phone design that Apple wants to use. Camera lenses aren't ever going to get smaller.
 
It's not a huge deal to me. However, it does feel like a missed opportunity. If they had made the phone's body very slightly thicker to avoid the protruding camera, and filled that additional room with more battery, we'd have a phone with greatly improved battery life AND no protruding camera.

Apple's obsession with thinness is leading them to compromise on other things. Also if the 6+ were very slightly thicker without the protruding camera, not only would it probably have the best battery life of any phone on the market, but it would be more rigid and less susceptible to bending.
 
In other phones, the protrusion is rather elegant. On iphone it's like an afterthought. It's like the unibody designers and camera designers never talked to each other, and only found out each other's dimensions in the last minute when it was too late.
 
zorinlynx said:
It's not a huge deal to me. However, it does feel like a missed opportunity. If they had made the phone's body very slightly thicker to avoid the protruding camera, and filled that additional room with more battery, we'd have a phone with greatly improved battery life AND no protruding camera.

Apple's obsession with thinness is leading them to compromise on other things. Also if the 6+ were very slightly thicker without the protruding camera, not only would it probably have the best battery life of any phone on the market, but it would be more rigid and less susceptible to bending.
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There's also a diminishing return to consider with Li-on batteries when it comes to depth. You get more out of width. It's not always as simple as thicker phone = longer life battery.
 
zorinlynx said:
It's not a huge deal to me. However, it does feel like a missed opportunity. If they had made the phone's body very slightly thicker to avoid the protruding camera, and filled that additional room with more battery, we'd have a phone with greatly improved battery life AND no protruding camera.

Apple's obsession with thinness is leading them to compromise on other things. Also if the 6+ were very slightly thicker without the protruding camera, not only would it probably have the best battery life of any phone on the market, but it would be more rigid and less susceptible to bending.
Click to expand...
I wonder if Apple designers have ever considered a tapered design for the iPhone (a la MacBook Pro with rectangular silhouette -> MacBook Air with triangular silhouette). It would allow them to make the camera lens flush with the body, plus allow the screen to tilt ever so slightly towards the user when set down on a table.

I'm sure it's been on the drawing board at some point, but maybe they'll consider it for production in the future.
 
Gmcube said:
Most people, including myself, would be perfectly fine with making the phone a bit thicker. Not only would it make the camera flush it would allow for a larger battery. We don't need to go thinner anymore.
Click to expand...

Added thickness + bigger battery = heavier phone

Something to also consider.
 
myscrnnm said:
I wonder if Apple designers have ever considered a tapered design for the iPhone (a la MacBook Pro with rectangular silhouette -> MacBook Air with triangular silhouette). It would allow them to make the camera lens flush with the body, plus allow the screen to tilt ever so slightly towards the user when set down on a table.

I'm sure it's been on the drawing board at some point, but maybe they'll consider it for production in the future.
Click to expand...

Agree. I'd be interested in seeing a more organic, less rigidly symmetrical design.
 
Gmcube said:
Most people, including myself, would be perfectly fine with making the phone a bit thicker. Not only would it make the camera flush it would allow for a larger battery. We don't need to go thinner anymore.
Click to expand...

Most people? Unless you have statistics just please refrain from saying "Most people" because I'm not one of them. I like a thinner phone. It's lighter and makes it easy to put in my dress shirt pocket. Also please refrain from saying "We" because you don't know what others need. I'm perfectly fine with the design of the camera. I didn't even pay attention to it protruding until this lovely forum brought it life.
 
HenryDJP said:
Most people? Unless you have statistics just please refrain from saying "Most people" because I'm not one of them. I like a thinner phone. It's lighter and makes it easy to put in my dress shirt pocket. Also please refrain from saying "We" because you don't know what others need. I'm perfectly fine with the design of the camera. I didn't even pay attention to it protruding until this lovely forum brought it life.
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chill man this isnt the supreme court, it's macrumors. he's obviously conjecturing.
and I support his conjecture - the iphone 5 was thicker and nobody complained that it was thick, people did complain that the battery life wasn't sufficient...
as such, it's a reasonable conjecture to say people would have preferred apple to increase battery life rather than reduce thickness, from the iphone 5 level.
 
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