iPhone 13 Camera is blurry

Please. When the calibration is clearly off and is evidenced by tons of people across the world reporting the same drop in quality, telling me it's "not the right phone for my needs" or that it's "me disliking it" but not a structural problem –that is a talking point straight out of Apple Store employee instructions.

I've had the same talk, in-person, with Apple Store staff when I returned my phone and their answer was carbon-copy: "it's just not the right phone for your needs". Same with Apple affiliated accounts on Twitter, even as I presented my side-by-side photo comparison: not the right phone for my needs.

This is disrespectful to paying customers who rightfully expect the latest model would outperform its 5 year old predecessor in every way possible. The 13 generation has botched cameras. There's no spinning it and I didn't buy the latest phone just so I could have a workaround with a third-party camera app (which isn't all that effective either).

It doesn't matter how "good" a product might be from a purely engineering perspective. If millions of people have a similar problem and can't find a work around or fix for the problem the product is a failure. Gaslighting the users is deceitful. Apple failed on this one and they've become so arrogant they can't admit it.

Seriously, Get a real one. These cameras are very expensive and once your committed into the apple ecosphere it's nearly impossible to get out. This isn't a market economy that works it's a top down dictatorship and Apple is making crap.

I have posted many photo in slightly low light at AWFUL quality in this forum and they keep getting deleted… when I spend over £1000 on a phone I expect it to look better than if it was taken on a 2006 model Motorola!!

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I can’t tell any different yet, it’s the selfie camera that is terrible for me, oil like texture and in even slightly low light, it turns to about 10 pixels, utterly terrible for the value of the phone (mine is 13pro)

Looks like digital zoom, which is used if the light is less than perfect and if you are zoomed to something other than .5x, 1x, 2x or 3x on a 14 Pro Max.

Your exposure is also too high, which has completely blown out your highlights.

No, Wrong. My wife's Samsung took the same pictures on the same day and she knows nothing about photography and all of her pictures came out great of the same thing on the same day. Same thing withy her windows tablet. We can both stand next to yachter and take the same picture and hers always aces compared to mine.

If you create something that is so complex most people can't figure it out it doesn't matter what great technology you think is in it, it insult good technology. The Samsung is a better camera. She never gets and picture and I get them everyday no matter what I Dom not matter the toggle to fix. I've bent taking picture since the days of film with rich Cameras, Nikons and had multiple digital cameras and an iPhone 5c and all of them gave me great pictures. I actually know a bit about technology and cameras. There's something wrong with this one with everyone reporting the same results. Apple aim; t perfect. throve made aleman and refuse to a admit it.

It's not an issue, it's minimum focus distance, a parameter of every camera system as that's how optics work.

The replacement of the camera shows it's not a hardware issue.

You may be unhappy with it, and I get that, but it's not going to change.

You have to take a step back until it focuses, with minimum focus distance being much more distant on the 13 Mini compared to the better camera system on the 13 Pro/Pro Max.

„It's not an issue, it's minimum focus distance, a parameter of every camera system as that's how optics work.“

Yes. I know. And that’s exactly the issue here. You can’t change the lenses of an iPhone like you can on a proper system camera. So you’re basically limited to the manufacturers camera design choice. And apple made a bad choice.

Any camera in a phone is supposed to be able to capture a wide spectrum of possible scenarios. So a compromise between those is desirable.

Most manufacturers these days solve that by adding lenses. Fair point. Looks weird, but does a good job.

But you cannot sell a phone with two lenses that is still not capable of properly capturing a common way people make pictures.

It‘s like selling a car that can only go above 30. And to solve that you have to constantly apply the brakes. That’s basically how it feels like to zoom in like an idiot and loose all your pixels by doing it. It’s neither convenient, nor efficient.

Also regarding the wide angle lens that is used for macro by the pro: How is that lens different to the wide angle lens on our 13 mini? Looking at the spec sheet it’s pretty similar. Just a slightly different aperture. The third tele lens doesn’t matter in our case.

So when their design choice makes it impossible to take close ups with the normal lens of the mini, why they haven’t at least solved that by doing the same as the Pro does with the wide angle?

Again. It’s a poor lens choice because they decided to not solve that „focus gap“ another way.

And people have every possible right to be mad about this.

Perhaps you should have factored that into your buying decision before buying the Mini. Had you purchased a Pro, it would have come with Macro Photographic capabilities. You can't blame Apple here. You chose the wrong phone.

Yeah. That’s a feature you don’t necessarily test directly when buying a phone.

It‘s like: „huh, let’s see if this new phone for 800€ can still do the same as the predecessor“. You simply assume that it’s able to do more than the older devices.

Also in any other aspect this phone is 10/10. It’s really sad. So there are many reasons to keep it. Even tho the camera is a downgrade.

Oh, and before I forget it: it’s the same with the iPhone 14 vs 14 pro.

The normal 14 takes blurry close ups while the pro „magically“ uses the wide angle lens and some clever software tricks. The normal 14 has a wide angle lens too.

You don’t see the my issue?

Semantics. You want to call it close up. Fine. Close up is Macro. And the iPhone you bought doesn't take close up photos, whereas the Pro models do. If close up photography was important to you, you bought the wrong iPhone.

No, I don’t see your issue except to see that you selected the wrong device. It is working as designed, but it isn’t meeting your needs.

The device isn’t going to change; if you purchase a telescope it won’t focus on anything closer than perhaps 25 feet away. That’s just the way it is.

Apple uses macro mode with the ultra-wide lens to allow you to focus on something closer than the minimum focus distance of the main wide lens. That’s the way it was with the 13 Pro/Pro Max and is with the 14 Pro/Pro Max. Unless the laws of optics change, it won’t be different in future models.

The lenses make for a minimum focus distance and if you need something that focuses on close objects, you need to choose your device accordingly.

What people at the Genius Bar have to say isn’t important except to show that perhaps Apple needs to better educate their employees as to the capabilities of each device; this behavior has been known for well over a year.

A possible workaround is available via the third party photo app Halide, which uses digital manipulation to provide a pseudo-macro mode for the Mini - not as good as what the Pro models can do but sometimes better than what can be achieved otherwise.