Blurry pics on iPhone 14 Pro Max (iOS 16.0.2)

Having the same issue, called Apple support. They’re apparently aware of the issue and the software team is notified and “working on the issue”. They also said they’re unable to tell me how long the “fix” software release will be, could be 1 months. Could be 6 months…

also offered me a phone swap but my phone passed all hardware issues so swapping the phone won’t really solve the issue.

FIXED IT! (Sort of…)

Basically, two things are at play here:

1) Apples Image Processing (and the QUAD PIXEL sensor technology is mostly at fault.)

2) The way the camera’s are programmed by default.

The first issue is the main root of the problem. The quad pixel sensor technology reduces the amount of resolution depending on how much light is needed on the image. Basically: Low light, sensor clusters pixels together to capture as much light as possible, you end up with at 7MP RAW image from the main camera, as opposed to the 48MP expected resolution (happened to me several times now.)

Here is an example of this issue:

The second issue at fault is that , specially for subjects that are closer than 1ft or so, the native camera app at 1x zoom switches from the main camera, to the ultrawide camera because the main camera can focus that close. It’s not too much of a big deal, since most people shoot subjects further away than 1ft. But it’s good to be aware of that.

To fix it (sort of) you unfortunately have to use a 3rd party app like HALIDE to override the software on the camera module and prevent it from doing the QUAD Pixel rubbish that makes a 48MP sensor output a blurry 7MP image. Even in low light, from my experience, HALIDE still provides better looking pictures, that are actually 48MP.

Agreed! Halide 2 proves its software, not hardware. You can literally see the iOS software changing the image. It’s beyond silly!

Resetting your phone, exchanging your phone for another, having them try putting in a new camera. None of that has worked for anyone in this thread. It is a software based issue 100%

As OP stated. The best thing any of us can do is continue to report it via this feedback link in his original post or calling them and opening up tickets. If you’re all upset about it, get upset enough to take the extra steps to report.

Link:

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

Oh they’re definitely aware of the issue and I still believe shutter speed / aperture and especially ISO calculations in their software are way off. I’ve been using ProCamera 16.1.1 with full manual control and the images are great. Still there is no excuse why a brand new iPhone with a 48mp camera takes pictures that are worse out of the box than an iPhone 2 or 3 generations older. I don’t think getting a replacement phone is the solution as I tried several at the Apple Store and the results are all the same.

took the camera on vacation and super annoyed - even shots set to 48mp quality are often dithered down to 12mp or lower…. Unless I use my PRoCam app…. Grrrr

I’m back from that Apple Store visit - 2 hours and totally worth it. I might have gotten this cold there but that’s another story.

First the store did things completely different than my last visit - the Apple employee working on my phone did everything right at the table next to me and explained each test. No more man behind the curtain. There were two camera specific diagnostics he was trying to run. My 14pm refused to run either of them. It would run pass the basic diagnostic, but then still not the camera diagnostics.

confirmed

1. the camera should auto focus
2. the camera should allow for auto focus override by tapping on the screen where you want focus
3. I should be able to zoom in on my photo and not get all this blur - any amount of zoom / cropping isn’t possible with my photos.

He agreed my photos showed issues and was surprised I could take a photo showing my hand while we talked and get no detail. After all of the troubleshooting the last one was reformatting the phone and starting fresh. Not reinstalling any of my cloud backup.

then the camera would run the diagnostics it previously couldn’t open.

it passed. We were both a little surprised. The camera could pick up details in my hand. After a few photos I noticed my palm was in focus but my fingers were out of focus. i agreed to use it “in the wild” for a few days to see how this “fix” held. So far it’s some better but I’m noticing it’s degrading / inconsistent again.

my next step is to ship it off to Apple for repair. Sounds like they will provide me a loaner phone or something. At least I won’t have to do all these steps over. Doing a reformat to get the camera to recover isn’t a good repeatable fix. Feels like it resets the camera and then it cannot hold a calibration.

My daughter took her 14 Pro to the Apple Store. They acknowledged there was an issue and said they are working on a firmware update. They said she wasn’t the first to come in or have it reported. She could wait for the firmware update or have her phone sent in and it would take a couple days to “fix or replace” the camera. She is going back up to school tomorrow so she chose to wait….

Hey guys. It’s been quite a saga for me if you’ve been reading this thread awhile lol. But I finally went to the Apple Store tonight (after weeks of back and forth with Apple support online) and they agreed the camera’s focus, quality and coloring was off. They eventually replaced my entire camera (took about an hour) and it appears the camera is working much better now. At least the focus and coloring is better. So it is definitely a hardware problem for some of us. The crappy post-processing software doesn’t help matters of course, but hopefully that will be addressed in future software updates. If your phone is within the 1 year Apple warranty (which all the 14 pro maxes are) they will replace the camera for free. I hope this helps some of you!

If they found something I’d get to the store asap. I’ve done the text Apple support running diagnostic and Apple certified Best Buy running the diagnostic in person to only get “your phone is fine.” However when I showed the example photo and blurry images to the ATT store (I too was looking for other options) they think it has to be this phone not software or everyone would be in line to return their phone. I did test shots with the demo 14PM at Best Buy and the ATT store and the images were much better. After 2 weeks you are beyond the return period, but post that you are still in the warranty period.

If you backup to the cloud, other than having to re enter a bunch of passwords it should be ok.

factory reset didn’t fix mine. I’ve tried it a few weeks and held out for 16.3 update in hopes of a fix.

I need to go back to the Apple Store to move on to the next step of “send offsite to Apple for repair” and I get a loner phone.

this is my 2nd 14pm. The first one had the camera grinding issue and blurry photos so it was swapped out since it was still blurry once grinding stopped. This one never had the grinding issue, but is blurry.

Yes, me too. A few things that have helped- I’ve learned the minimal focal distance has increased- meaning if you want to take photos of anything up close you have to physically hold your phone farther away. The phone will automatically switch (more like jump cause it’s so shaky) to the ultra wide lens when doing a close up- this causes a much lower quality as it is not as good of a lens as the 1x lens. You can stop it from switching manually by clicking on the little yellow flower icon that appears in the lower left corner (have to turn on macro settings to see this flower icon appear) it is SUCH a pain to have to click the flower icon every time and hold the phone physically away from what you’re photographing, but it helps improve the photo quality for close up shots (photographing items for my eBay store has been so so annoying going through this process for every photo lol!)

the other thing I’ve learned from reading articles and watching you tube videos about this camera is that the aperture is smaller, meaning the lenses don’t let in as much natural light as previous iPhone cameras. I’ve found this results in darker, muddier images- almost tinged brown. It’s been very disappointing.

long distance landscape shots with perfect lighting is the only scenario where the 14 pro max will take a good photo. Even then, half the time the post processing ruins the image (lots of grain) I end up deleting a lot of photos.

it’s very disappointing. I really hope apple will address!

Hi sorry I didn’t get back to you I went to Apple shop on the way to hospital to get the results of my biopsies n it wasn’t good news so I’ve been busy & distracted. The ‘genius’ said he doesn’t know why I was sent there! There’s nothing he could do it’s a hardware problem not a software problem if what we’re claiming is true. He hadn’t heard of the issue before so I told him it was all over the web, YouTube, Reddit etc n even Apple support so he looked at some of the comments and said if I was you, yours is a new phone take it back nothing can be done. I said you shouldn’t be allowed to sell defective phones for so much money. You’ve lost a lot of trust in your loyal customers who upgrade regularly. Your cameras are too clever for their own good they’re not sure what lens to use and the result is a blurred photo with no definition, sharpness and true colour.

I have just called polish apple support and they confirmed that issue is currently known as global and they believe that it is going to be resolved with software update. Nevertheless, he told me that once you can see anything suspicious on the camera preview screen (before taking the photo), your camera most probably needs to be replaced.

I have to report...

I figured out what was the dang culprit with the out of focus on the selfies!!! Check your darn screen protector!!! CHECK YOUR SCREEN PROTECTOR!!! As soooon as I removed the screen protector that fixed it....the out of focus mess for the selfies.... & then I got the liquid screen protector instead due to the weird new way the top black box on the top of the front of the cell is located! The regular screen protector was covering a lot of it and just was the reason why this was happening. I truly hope I can help others with this issue wooo so happy I got it back for the selfies yay

Hello all, wish I had better news to report, but I do know that exchanging your phone won’t help this issue. This is a software issue and not hardware related. I found that on the blurry photos, if I open in google photos and edit, it fixes the blur issues. This is the first time in a long time that Apple has updated their camera and I believe it’s just taking longer then usual to fix the software. Fingers cross this gets fixed in a future beta. But at least for now I can fix my blurry portraits using google photos lol