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There it was, nestled amongst our workplace’s pile of getting old smartphones, a white iPhone 3GS. I felt like I’d simply came upon a classic Furby. Cradling the tiny, 4.5-in telephone in my hand, I questioned if it nonetheless labored.
I had purpose to doubt. After all, the iPhone 3GS shipped 16 years in the past, and this one had been sitting in a drawer for I do not understand how lengthy. The solely approach to know was to cost it up. Fortunately, I’m a little bit of a hoarder, and I nonetheless have fairly a number of 30-pin charging cables mendacity round.
Now that I had the iPhone 3GS totally charged, I questioned what to do with it. I could not put it on a cell community since 3G help ended round 2022. Wi-Fi labored, nonetheless, so I opened the settings and put the telephone on my native workplace community.
I ought to say that each operation with the telephone was a trial. Each keystroke took a beat to look, but it surely labored properly sufficient for my functions.
What have been these functions? A digital camera comparability, in fact, and never with simply any shooter. I deliberate to pit one of many earliest iPhones towards the apex handset, the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
Since the iPhone 3GS has just one camera, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max has four, I decided to only compare the 3GS lens with the 17 Pro Max’s main camera.
From a specs point of view, here’s how they compare:
|
iPhone 3GS |
iPhone 17 Pro Max |
|
3-megapixel still camera |
48MP Fusion Main: 24 mm, ƒ/1.78 aperture, sensor‑shift optical image stabilization, Focus Pixels |
Right. There is no comparison. This table doesn’t even mention the significant differences in the silicon backing these photographic capabilities.
The iPhone 17 Pro Max has the A19 Pro and a powerful image pipeline that includes Apple’s “Photonic Engine,” computational photography that shoots multiple images and uses, among other things, machine learning, to create a final photo.
The iPhone 3GS had a little 600MHz Samsung chip that didn’t really pitch in much on the image capture front.
In other words, I’m under no illusion that I can create a direct comparison of photographic capabilities. What I could do, though, is illustrate just how far we’ve come in a relatively short 16 years. Traditional photography hasn’t made leaps like this in such a short time. Over a similar timeframe of film photography, you saw incremental upgrades in lenses and controls, but the art of image capture remained aside from color photography, relatively static for decades.
Let the games begin
I started by opening the camera app on the iPhone 3GS and…nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. I got to stare for a bit at the Camera app’s aperture-like shutter screen that usually opens to reveal the viewfinder.
At first, I thought the phone was broken, and I was ready to scrap the experiment when the virtual aperture finally spun open, and I could see through the tiny camera.
It was time to start taking photos, but…
I discovered another frustrating and also understandable limitation. Even though the iPhone 3GS worked and let me take photos, the fully charged battery would get exhausted after just a few shots – no warning, just a dead screen. What I was experiencing was a battery whose fully charged capacity had dropped to a few minutes. Getting a replacement battery was out of the question, so I had to make do.
Over the next few days, I did my best to, whenever I took a photo with the iPhone 3GS, take a matching shot with the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s main camera. In an effort to give the iPhone 3GS a fighting chance, I never tapped on either screen to adjust the exposure or focus, just point and shoot.
It’s hard to compare the image capture resolutions of these two phones; the iPhone 17 Pro Max is taking up to 48MP but defaulting to 24MP images with a resolution of 5712×4248. Compare this to the iPhone 3GS’s 2048×1536.
All images on the 17Pro Max were shot in a 16:9 aspect ratio. The iPhone 3GS only offers 4:3. No editing of any kind was done before posting the images below.
Side note: Carrying around the white iPhone 3GS was a joy. It not only slipped right into my pocket, but it also slid effortlessly into the tiny coin pocket nestled inside the larger pants pocket. I often forgot I was carrying it.
iPhone 17 Pro Max main camera vs. iPhone 3GS camera
This banana photo is a perfect example of the many image quality differences between the two phones. The colors on the iPhone 3GS image are, on the whole, flat. It’s a relatively low-light situation that proves challenging for the 3GS (note the significant grain). Meanwhile, the banana in the iPhone 17 Pro Max essentially jumps out of the frame.
Image 1 of 2
As you might imagine, there’s virtually no comparison on the portrait front. The iPhone 17 Pro Max main camera offers a wider-angle lens, automatically pulling in more of the scene without taking anything away from our subject, Tom’s Guide’s Kate Kozuch.
Again, the low-light scenario provides your complete 3GS picture a grey overcast and throws an excessive amount of of her face into shadow. There’s a wealth of colours and heat within the iPhone 17 Pro Max picture. The pores and skin tone is nearly good. While you may rely particular person hairs within the 17 Pro Max picture, these particulars are largely misplaced within the low-resolution iPhone 3GS portrait.
Image 1 of 2
It’s laborious to consider these two prepare platform photographs have been shot on the identical time of day, however they have been, and simply seconds aside. The iPhone 17 Pro Max is inarguably the higher picture, however there is a sure noirish romanticism within the iPhone 3GS shot. I do know it is nearly all shades of gray-blue, however I type of prefer it.
Image 1 of 2
The iPhone 3GS’ give attention to the headlights provides this picture an ethereal really feel, but it surely’s additionally, total, a really darkish photograph regardless that it was captured throughout an overcast afternoon. The iPhone 17 Pro Max provides us a wider discipline of view and a much more cohesive photograph.
Image 1 of 2
This is the one true nighttime photograph of the sequence. The iPhone 3GS turned the sky inexperienced, and the vehicles are a blurry mess. The iPhone 17 Pro Max’s digital camera is nearly quick sufficient to freeze the vehicles. The sky is unnaturally vibrant, however, in fact, the 17 Pro Max will get main factors for readability and element.
Image 1 of 2
Look, the iPhone 3GS wins factors for the moodiness, however the iPhone 17 Pro Max is just higher at dealing with difficult publicity conditions. A foggy day like this implies a way-too-bright wash of grey sky that, for the 3GS, throws the foreground into darkness. Apple’s fashionable computational images is expertly assessing your complete scene and making use of multi-point publicity for a extra visually correct picture.
One different factor value noting: the iPhone 17 Pro Max digital camera app features a levelling device that helped me be sure that my photographs have been at all times degree. Obviously, the 3GS has no such device, which is why the Empire State Building leans barely to the proper.
Image 1 of 2
It’s laborious to consider we ever shared images from the iPhone 3GS (sure, Twitter was put in within the telephone). The iPhone 3GS produced a very unappetizing meals photograph with flat, muddy colours and a definite lack of depth for every pastry. The iPhone 17 Pro Max makes all of it look so actual and yummy.
Image 1 of 2
Final ideas
By the best way, after I took these images on the 3GS, I had to determine how one can get them from the telephone to my laptop computer, and this story. I attempted plugging the telephone into my MacBook Air, but even though the system recognized the phone, it could not mount it as a drive.
I found, though, that the Safari browser worked well enough to let me log into Gmail. So, yes, I mailed the images to myself.
Not only do these photos illustrate the vast differences between camera, image sensor, and photo-processing capabilities, but also all that we now take for granted on our flagship smartphones. These cameras now do so much to stabilize images, fix exposure, ensure color accuracy, and maintain focus. They also give us previously unimaginable image clarity. I chose to shoot at just 24MP on the iPhone 17 Pro Max, but could have selected 48MP and even shot in raw for exquisite detail and complete control.
Sure, the iPhone 3GS loses this round, but nothing can compare to its size, portablilty or the nostalgia of these images. They really do speak to a simpler time. One that some generations are now striving for as they pick up older point and shoots, revive film cameras, and seek a pre-filter, and grittier look and feel for their photos.
I guess they could try to find their own iPhone 3GS, but they’ll need new batteries and a whole lot of patience.
This page was created programmatically, to read the article in its original location you can go to the link bellow:
https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/iphone-17-pro-max-vs-iphone-3-gs-perfectly-illustrates-16-years-of-smartphone-photography-progress
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