IT House reported on September 8 that netizen pdfu posted on the MacRumors forum yesterday (September 7). By digging into the iOS 27 Beta 8 update, he discovered that Apple plans to upgrade the camera functions of iPhone 17, iPhone 18 Pro and other models, covering five functions such as exposure and focus assist.
IT House quoted a blog post and attached the five camera functions in the iOS 27 code as follows:
1. Exposure range
The exposure scope in iOS 27 can display histograms or waveforms in the shooting interface. Histograms count the distribution of pixels in shadow, midtone, and highlight areas. The waveform graph retains the horizontal position of the pixels, allowing users to quickly locate brighter or darker areas in the image.
Both tools provide 3 presets: Brightness, RGB Composite (RGB Composite) and RGB Parade (RGB Array). The histogram can also be switched to a continuous curve or an independent histogram. IT House attaches the relevant videos as follows:
2. Focus peak
iOS 27 also tests Focus Peaking. This feature uses color to highlight local edges with high contrast, helping users determine which areas of the image are in sharp focus. The system code supports adjusting marker color, effect sensitivity, and transition duration.
The camera preview screen may also add a highlight overflow prompt. When the highlight area approaches or reaches an overexposed state, the system can directly overwrite the prompt layer. The current code supports 4 styles: solid color, pulse color, diagonal stripe “zebra pattern” and checkerboard, and supports setting overflow threshold and overlay color.
3. Continuous Selfie
Continuous time-lapse shooting allows users to take multiple time-lapse photos at once. After each shot, the system will immediately restart the countdown without waiting for the previous photo to be saved, so multiple photos can be taken continuously.
4. Manual focus
Apple also tested Manual Focus capabilities. Previously, a control called ChromeLensPositionControls appeared in iOS 26, which can display a focus slider with a value ranging from 0 to 1; moving the slider will lock the focus and pass the selected lens position to the shooting controller, but this slider was removed in iOS 27 Beta 1.
The manual focus function allows users to set and lock the focus without relying entirely on autofocus. Similar capabilities have appeared in Apple’s Final Cut Camera App.
5. Variable aperture clues
iOS 27’s image processing code adjusts lens correction based on aperture settings and blends up to 4 reference points for smooth results. This feature may serve variable aperture lenses: the lens opening can be expanded or reduced, and different apertures will change the imaging characteristics of the lens, so the system needs to adjust the correction parameters accordingly.
Based on many clues currently exposed, Apple iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max will be equipped with variable aperture main cameras for the first time. Therefore, these codes exposed this time are regarded as clues that the new phones may support some functions.
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