iPhone 13 Camera is blurry

I have just switched over from a Samsung Galaxy Note 10 to the iPhone 13 pro and I am utterly disappointed with the abysmal photo quality. The camera was one of the main reasons I bought this phone. The Note 10 is way better. They photos look like oil paintings,not photos. This is utterly unacceptable for a device like this.

Can You please show results of your internet research ?

I’d like to see oil painting effect on Samsung and google device you mentioned but I wasn’t able to find it.

it would be very helpful and I d like to make a comparison.

The first pic looks like an art installation. I'm not sure that's a real squirrel & tree; either that or it is a weird filter applied after the pic was taken. The second pic is too small to tell much of anything about the image quality.

Hello ~ No one likes to be called a liar . If my iPhone took pictures that I didn’t like I would start using one of my other cameras most likely my Canon EOS 5. Probably best that you go to the Samsung community and look at the complaints there. I am very pleased with my iPhone and I have 1000’s upon 1000’s of pictures that I would have never had been able to enjoy without it. Thx Apple!

~Katana-San~

All I’m asking for is where the pics came from. Where did I call you a liar? The first pic doesn’t frankly look like a pic of something natural. The second one is simply too small to discern if there’s an iq issue or not.

Hello again ~ This is from the Samsung community posting problems. I am not going to put up anything false here to defend a position for anyone or anything. If my iPhone was doing this I would post that as well. This picture doesn’t look “natural” either.

~Katana-San~

There are also many professional photographers who use their iPhone 13 family phones each and every day.

The iPhone 13 will take pictures like a low-end phone if you try and use it as one, or it can take photos with professional quality if you do that.

You also ignore the fact that all high-end smartphones process even more than the iPhone 13 does; yesterday I tried taking photos with a Samsung Galaxy S22 and a Google Pixel 6 and saw multiple artifacts in each, much more than I see in 13 Pro Max photos.

You seem to disparage people who use the phone for vlogs and such, but what do you think the primary use of the cameras is?

It pains me to say this, but this may be my last iPhone. For the price, the quality is far subpar from what I have come to expect. Now, I’m aware that Tim Cook is not exactly Steve Jobs, who always managed to get the right people to create a superior product, but under Cook’s tenure, I’ve seen quality and innovation lag far behind, while prices continue to sky rocket. A friend lend me his Huawei phone, and another his Samsung phone, and their photo quality were far superior than the Apple, specially the Huawei. I wish there wasn’t a ban on these phones because they clearly outpace the iPhone. I didn’t foresee having to carry a digital camera along with my phone everywhere I go. I’m extremely disappointed on this phone.

Fact remains: whatever DXOMARK might say, a side by side comparison with the 11 Pro cameras is enough to show far more bizarre artefacts, detail loss and erratic performance than their own 3-year old past flagship. There's just no way to defend Apple over this and abstractly quoting "the industry" doesn't change facts.

Last, given this is a global forum, a user's experience with another OEM's camera is very consequential indeed to the other readers!

PS. If the cameras are indeed "working as designed", then they weren't designed very well.

[Edited by Moderator]

I have no control over content here, and don't work for Apple, I am a user, just as you are.

If a post was removed, it was because it was a violation of the Apple Support Communities User Agreement we all agreed to follow when creating an account here.

As far as new cameras vs. those on the iPhone 11, it's also clear that most prefer the computational photography done by the 13; were that not the case the phones wouldn't sell and their cameras wouldn't be so well-reviewed.

In full agreement. The camera on my 13 pro max is almost unusable! I had an 11 pro max with an incredible camera! It took amazing photos. I’m at a loss as to what to do. This phone was $$$$ and I absolutely hate it. Even the reception sucks! 🤔😩

I guess I'd like to reiterate that the problem I'm seeing is a little different than most of the comments on this thread. Overall, I'm pleased with the 13 pm. Mostly I take landscape pictures, and they're great. Even when hiking down the mountain at dusk, with the trail barely visible by the fading sunset, the pictures are amazing. To me anyway.

That said, I also take a lot of wildflower pictures. Usually these are sharp and clear, even in "macro" mode. EXCEPT for red flowers. It seems the auto-focus mechanism is blind to red. If it's looking at the pixels in the main image sensor, it's acting like it's only picking up the green ones. If it's using the "lidar" thing, somehow even though that's infrared, it not seeing the regular visible red flowers - it focuses (quite nicely, alas) on the more distant background - the green foliage, or brown dirt... White and blue flowers focus nicely. (Maybe it's time to get a DSLR? Sigh.)

I have the same probpem and nine of the suggestions here fix the problem. It even seems to be random. I can take a few pictures and they come out good and then, in the next few minutes in the same place, sane lighting everything they next batch come out like your second one. they look like a cartoon and distorted with all the edges shaved off. nothing is crisp.

Oh no, my daughter bought a new iPhone today especially to have a better camera. She had an iPhone 8. On her new iPhone 13 mini selfies are way worse than before on the 8. Blurry even. She was so happy when her phone arrived, now she is in tears. Come on Apple this can't be right?!? For this kind of money? I'm furious!

I'm really sorry to read that @bleblans. I felt the same when I realised my expensive 13 Pro Max couldn't keep up with my 11 Pro. My friend is also furious that his new 13 is less versatile and produces poorer results than his old XR. I returned my 13PM and unless Apple fixes the situation with their next phone I'm likely to jump ship.

To add insult to injury, there are people in these forums who will do their best to convince you it's the best camera ever therefore it's "your" problem or "it's not the right phone for you". If only they had the resolve to say that face to face to you, me or your daughter.