Where are the microphones on an iPhone XS Max?

Thanks for reminding me that I still am unclear on what is happening here!

To further the mystery, I downloaded an app called auphonic because it promised being allowed to choose which mic to record from (it didn't work first time, bummer, trying again). Mysteriously there is an option called "iPhone Microphone (Back)". The other options are "iPhone Microphone (Front)" and "iPhone Microphone (Bottom)".

So...

That's... three? or is it... I don't know. It's confusing.

So I looked at the back of my phone and by the lens there is a tiny hole. On every image I could find (I spent all of 1.5 minutes searching) of the rear camera on an XS Max there is no indication of what that hole is!!!

So... is it a microphone?

Is this the biggest deal in the world? No. But I'm going on a trip tomorrow and am trying to decide whether to bring my tascam field recorder with me. I likely will either way... but... I have to say I would be quite pleased if this $1250 phone produced tascam/zoom ish audio. I have a feeling it can, but that no-one talks about it because of the niche.

Does anyone know???!

Lastly, for now, the image at the intro whatever that was only specifies a single microphone.

My assumption based on all this is that there is a mic on the back by the camera, a mic on the front top by face id camera, and a stereo mic situation on the bottom.

Would be nice if someone just... knew!

Maybe I'll continue my obsession and find a tear down video or something.

Ok. Thanks to the Auphonic App (which looks promising but doesn't offer being able to do stereo recordings, ie choose more than one mic to record with at a time), I was able to isolate each mic by rubbing my finger over where they "should/could" be.

Back: By the two camera lenses (the little hole)

Top Front: by the face id and speaker camera

Top Bottom: only one mic* that is, as you face the phone, to the left.

I found an article that says that "one of the microphones is used for noise cancellation" so I assume that that other mic isn't "available" for apps.

This is certainly enough to do some interesting sound recordings, and the audio quality is surprisingly good from my very limited testing. If someone doesn't create an field recording app that utilizes the different mic arrays maybe I'll have to learn to code one 😉

Awesome. Thank you! I should have titled this "where are the *FOUR* microphones?"... So I'm guessing that there are two stereo pairs... I saw that initially but they only label two microphones (technically). Hopefully there will be apps going forward that allow you to play with the soundspace if you are into that kinda thing.