MacRumors traveled to New York City this week to spend some time with the iPhone XR ahead of its release. While there, we spent the day testing its camera and Portrait Mode with Depth Control with help from some volunteer New Yorkers.
Behind the scenes of shooting with the iPhone XR (not taken with iPhone XR)
The photos below were shot with the iPhone XR's default Camera app on iOS 12, and are unedited beyond being resized for this gallery. For some photos, we took advantage of standard features of the Camera app, such as Depth Control and manually adjusting the exposure of photos by tapping on a focus point.
While the iPhone XR does not have a telephoto lens like the iPhone XS and XS Max, the single wide-angle lens captures an impressive amount of detail. And with Depth Control, Apple has taken Portrait Mode to a whole new level, resulting in photos of people that are comparable to those shot with a DSLR camera.
We'll have more impressions about the iPhone XR cameras in the days to come, but after one day of testing, we can safely say that most people should be more than happy with the quality of photos shot on this device.
iPhone XR launches tomorrow, Friday, October 26. Stay tuned to MacRumors for continued coverage of the device.
Saturday April 11, 2026 8:17 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
As we previously reported, astronauts aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft used the iPhone 17 Pro Max to take selfies of themselves with the Earth in the background during the Artemis II mission around the far side of the Moon last week.
Now that the crew members have safely returned to Earth, Apple's CEO Tim Cook and marketing chief Greg Joswiak have both turned to social media to congratulate...
Apple's iPhone became qualified for extended use in space back in February, and during the Artemis II mission to the Moon in April, NASA astronauts shared several photos taken with the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman recently followed up with a shot on iPhone video of an "Earthset," or the moment that the Earth disappears behind the Moon. The video was captured from the...
Saturday April 18, 2026 6:45 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
During its Platforms State of the Union segment at WWDC 2025, Apple revealed that macOS 26 Tahoe is the final major macOS version for Intel-based Macs.
The upcoming macOS 27 release will be compatible with Apple silicon Macs only, meaning that you will need a Mac with an M-series chip or a MacBook Neo with an A18 Pro chip in order to install the software update. macOS 27 should be available...
These photos don’t look very good to me, but I don’t think I’m seeing the actual original photo files the author of this article took. The photos I’m seeing look like they were posted at lower resolution to take less bandwidth for people reading this online.
