IPhone XS Noisy

is anone else finding that the quality of the XS images has decreased? I just upgraded from an iPhone 7 and the image quality seems to show a significant amount of noise compared to the old images. It seems ok in good light, but with portrait mode or in reduced lighting conditions the noise is really bad. The images would be fine for sharing on social media etc but anything elnarged or attempted to be printed would be completely unacceptable. My older iPhone did not have this issue and I was really hoping that the upgrade would be a significant improvement. Maybe I am being too picky but I would not have upgraded if I had seen this issue. It is the reason I purchased the new phone.

The noise appears as poor image quality and as if the image was very low resolution. I am wondering if this has to do with the way the portrait mode functions? Does anyone have any strategies to counter this issue?

It depends on what you're comparing it to but in general I've been extremely impressed. For example, this picture was well past sunset and is at ISO 640. I think it's amazing image quality under those circumstances for a cell phone. This is SOC. It was very dark and my friend's 12 year old DSLR could not get a picture close to this quality.



My edit

The Xs favors faster shutter speeds to improve the smart HDR. Also faster shutter speeds will help freeze motion in lower light. Unfortunately the increased 1.4 micron pixels is not enough to eliviate the increased noise.

bigley Ling said:

The Xs favors faster shutter speeds to improve the smart HDR. Also faster shutter speeds will help freeze motion in lower light. Unfortunately the increased 1.4 micron pixels is not enough to eliviate the increased noise.

Click to expand...

Interesting. In my pic above, I was wondering why it didn’t pick a shutter speed closer to 1/15. That’s probably what my galaxy S7 would have done. That makes sense though.

bigley Ling said:

The Xs favors faster shutter speeds to improve the smart HDR. Also faster shutter speeds will help freeze motion in lower light. Unfortunately the increased 1.4 micron pixels is not enough to eliviate the increased noise.

Click to expand...

For what I understand this is only a problem in apps that don’t use the multi frame trick of smart HDR. These apps should override the exposure strategy. Isn’t that what Halide have done ?

iPhone XS Thanks all for commenting and helping me figure this out. I just was at the Apple store and compared my phone to the XR by taking photos of the same scene with the two phones. My phone was clearly more noisy and less sharp. I tried playing with all the settings I could and deselected the HEIC format which seeemed to help the most. But the difference was clear the XR took better photos. I am picky about the quality of my images but my phone is not performing well. I worked with am Apple employee and they could see the difference and told me to call Apple support. But in reading about this issue it may stem partly because of the fact that the XS is forced to use the wider lens that the XR does not have such functions more like a true camera without the software enhancing gimmicks. I will try to upload a recent photo example of the noise. This photo was taken under an overcast sky at dusk. The conditions were not good but I did use a flash and was close enough to get good illumination from the flash and this is a great example of the noise I am getting.




iPhone XS noise example.

wb07 said:

iPhone XS Thanks all for commenting and helping me figure this out. I just was at the Apple store and compared my phone to the XR by taking photos of the same scene with the two phones. My phone was clearly more noisy and less sharp. I tried playing with all the settings I could and deselected the HEIC format which seeemed to help the most. But the difference was clear the XR took better photos. I am picky about the quality of my images but my phone is not performing well. I worked with am Apple employee and they could see the difference and told me to call Apple support. But in reading about this issue it may stem partly because of the fact that the XS is forced to use the wider lens that the XR does not have such functions more like a true camera without the software enhancing gimmicks. I will try to upload a recent photo example of the noise. This photo was taken under an overcast sky at dusk. The conditions were not good but I did use a flash and was close enough to get good illumination from the flash and this is a great example of the noise I am getting.


iPhone XS noise example.

Click to expand...

Well, the noise is terrible there but it looks like it's very dark out

wb07 said:

iPhone XS Thanks all for commenting and helping me figure this out. I just was at the Apple store and compared my phone to the XR by taking photos of the same scene with the two phones. My phone was clearly more noisy and less sharp. I tried playing with all the settings I could and deselected the HEIC format which seeemed to help the most. But the difference was clear the XR took better photos. I am picky about the quality of my images but my phone is not performing well. I worked with am Apple employee and they could see the difference and told me to call Apple support. But in reading about this issue it may stem partly because of the fact that the XS is forced to use the wider lens that the XR does not have such functions more like a true camera without the software enhancing gimmicks. I will try to upload a recent photo example of the noise. This photo was taken under an overcast sky at dusk. The conditions were not good but I did use a flash and was close enough to get good illumination from the flash and this is a great example of the noise I am getting.


iPhone XS noise example.

Click to expand...

A few more comments. I see you used the 2X lens. This has a slower aperture (2.4 vs. 1.8) and smaller sensor. It will do worse in low light than the wide angle lens. How many minutes after sunset (or before sunrise) was this picture?

If you want me to give my opinion on whether your camera's images are noisier than mine, it would help to see wide angle shots right around sunset and then maybe 10 min past sunset. Or if you're still in a trial period with your new phone, maybe you can exchange it for a new one.

In general, I think the noise reduction is pretty good on mine though. Here is a wide angle picture I took this morning about thirty minutes before sunrise. That is a dark time and is hard for any camera. This picture is SOC. (I didn't edit it.)

I recovered a good amount of light without bringing much noise in.

Yes this was the portrait lens and just a clear example of the noise I have been seeing. I have found that I used to be able to take photos in similar conditions and did not have the same issue with noise on my iPhone 8. I think some of the problem is the wide angle multi lens set up and some is the software. I have downloaded 12.1 and will test the new update. I also have found that if I use light room to take photos I can force the iPhone to use a single lens with much better results. I do realize this is just a smart phone but it seems that the quality of the images has decreased from the iPhone 8. I am still trouble shooting to see if I can find the sweetspot. The sensor works great in good light which is fine for snapshots. I tend to think more about the composition and texture of light and when I don’t have my traditional cameras I use the next best thing my iPhone.