The iOS 18.1 beta 4 released last night further improves the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max’s camera, with support for capturing space photos. During the “It’s Glowtime” keynote, Apple revealed space photo capture for the iPhone 16 lineup, but the feature is also coming to last year’s flagship models. Good news that our old friend Brian shared on X.
A new feature that goes from the iPhone 16 to the iPhone 15 Pro
Since their launch last year, the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max have supported spatial video recording, a kind of 3D capture that then allows for unparalleled immersion in the manufacturer’s Vision Pro. With iOS 18.1, customers now have a new dedicated “Spatial” option in the Camera app to easily switch between capturing spatial videos and spatial photos.
Apple describes the Space Shot feature like this:
Record space photos and videos with remarkable depth to view in the Photos app on Apple Vision Pro. For best results, hold iPhone in landscape orientation and steady while recording. Videos are recorded at 30 frames per second in 1080p. One minute of space video is about 130MB. A space photo is about 5MB.
Space photos and videos can then be viewed on an Apple Vision Pro. Better yet, visionOS 2, which was released this week in final form, allows users to create space photos directly from any image in their library.
Technically, the American firm describes spatial shots as a new type of stereoscopic content that immerses people in a moment and gives them a greater sense of presence in a scene. A spatial photo is a multi-frame HEIC file containing a left eye image and a right eye image, a stereo pair group, and spatial metadata. A spatial video is a QuickTime movie with a MV-HEVC stereo video track and spatial metadata.
iOS 18.1 Release Date
iOS 18.1 is currently available as a developer beta. During the iPhone 16 reveal last week, Apple confirmed that this version, which will include the first features of Apple Intelligence, will be released in October.
