The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max will feature new technology that will help narrow the bezels around the display to just 1.5mm, compared to 2.2mm on the iPhone 14 Pro series. The LIPO display process is already being used by the Apple Watch Series 7 and Apple is now expected to introduce it in the iPhone Pro series and eventually in the next generation iPad Pro devices.

The company has been using its own Lightning charger for iPhones since 2012, but the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus will be compatible with USB-C charging. 120Hz ProMotion displays will remain exclusive to the Pro phones.

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models will reportedly have titanium edges instead of stainless steel. This will make the models lighter and more comfortable.

The 15 Pro series will also have updated cameras with a true periscope lens that will be exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro Max and will offer 6x optical zoom.

The new features on this year’s new iPhones are expected to come at a higher price. The price of the iPhone 15 Pro Max is said to start at $200 more than last year’s 14 Pro Max, while the price of the 15 Pro will increase by $100.

These days, many state-of-the-art cameras for demanding applications rely on mechanisms that are considerably different from those in consumer-oriented devices. One of these cameras employs what is known as “single-photon imaging,” which can produce vastly superior results in dark conditions and fast dynamic scenes.

This type of imaging has few ways to deal with moving objects; the movement of the object has to be much slower than the exposure time to avoid blurring, which occurs when taking pictures with regular CMOS cameras, like the ones on smartphones. Single-photon cameras capture a rapid burst of consecutive frames with very short individual exposure times. These frames are binary―a grid of 1s and 0s that respectively indicate whether one photon arrived at each pixel or not during exposure. To reconstruct an actual picture from these binary frames (or bit planes), many of them have to be processed into a single non-binary image. This can be achieved by assigning different levels of brightness to all the pixels in the grid, depending on how many of the bit planes had a “1” for each pixel.

The completely digital nature of single-photon imaging allows for designing clever image reconstruction algorithms that can make up for technical limitations or difficult scenarios. At Tokyo University of Science, Japan, Professor Takayuki Hamamoto has been leading a research team focused on taking the capabilities of single-photon imaging further. In the latest study by Prof. Hamamoto and his team, which was published in IEEE Access, they developed a highly effective algorithm to fix the blurring caused by motion in the imaged objects, as well as common blurring of the entire image such as that caused by the shaking of the camera.

A motion estimation algorithm tracks the movement of individual pixels through statistical evaluations on how bit values change over time (over different bit planes). In this way, as demonstrated experimentally by the researchers, the motion of individual objects can be accurately estimated. Prof. Hamamoto remarks:

Our tests show that the proposed motion estimation technique produced results with errors of less than one pixel, even in dark conditions with few incident photons

The team developed a second algorithm that pixels with a similar motion, thereby identifying in each bit plane separate objects moving at different speeds, which allows for deblurring each region of the image independently according to the motions of objects that pass through it. Prof. Hamamoto adds:

Methods for obtaining crisp images in photon-limited situations would be useful in several fields, including medicine, security, and science. Our approach will hopefully lead to new technology for high-quality imaging in dark environments, like outer space, and super-slow recording that will far exceed the capabilities of today’s fastest cameras

He also states that even consumer-level cameras might timely benefit from progress in single-photon imaging.