iPhone 6 has serious camera problems, say Tom's Guide testers

The iPhone has been known for its great camera. But iPhone 6, maybe not so much.

Even with its new “focus-pixel” autofocus and optical image stabilization (in the iPhone 6 Plus), the cameras on the newest iPhones have some serious problems. That’s what the good (and typically reliable) people at Tom’s Guide (sister site to Tom’s Hardware) are saying today.

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While most of the test photos taken with the new phones looked good, Tom’s says, “We often saw fundamental flaws in how the cameras capture colors.”

Tom’s tested the cameras on the two new iPhone 6 models (regular and Plus) and noted that the white balance in the resulting photos was inconsistent so that they looked “slightly purple or magenta.”

They also noticed that the photos had a purple-hued smear at the edges — an effect they call a “chromatic aberration.”

Tom’s testers shot photos with the iPhone 5 and 5s models, some running iOS 7.1.2 and some running iOS 8.0. Because they noticed the problems were much less pronounced on the phones running iOS 7 compared to ones running iOS 8, they suspect that the problem may be in the software, not in the hardware.

As a control, the testers took photos using a Galaxy S5 running Android 4.4.2 and didn’t notice the problems that appeared in the iPhone 6 shots.

Tom’s says they viewed the pictures on three high-quality monitors, as well as two MacBook Pros with retina displays.

The people at Tom’s Guide say they even saw the color problems they discovered in test photos featured in iPhone 6 reviews on other websites.

Because it found the camera problems in three separate iPhone 6 phones, Tom’s says it doubts that it’s a fluke. They have shared the test results with Apple, which is now reviewing them.

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You can find more details about the testing in the write-up at the Tom’s Guide blog.