Blurry iPhone Text Picture Problem: Is There an Easy Solution I'm Missing?
andy99
18 points
3 comments
April 13, 2026
Related Discussions
Found 5 related stories in 102.9ms across 10,500 title embeddings via pgvector HNSW
- I Can't See Apple's Vision birdculture · 19 pts · March 28, 2026 · 46% similar
- A greyscale iPhone setup that works in everyday life hemmert · 85 pts · June 11, 2026 · 45% similar
- "Privacy. That's iPhone." – and Other Things That Need an Asterisk upofadown · 12 pts · April 04, 2026 · 42% similar
- Possibility of modifying an image to see without glasses? (2010) zeristor · 39 pts · April 25, 2026 · 41% similar
- Talking Liquid Glass with Apple lapcat · 12 pts · March 23, 2026 · 40% similar
Discussion Highlights (2 comments)
ricardobeat
Apple applies a really heavy-handed text-enhancing algorithm by default. I first noticed this with the iPhone 16 - in an Apple Store, if you took a picture of the product card sitting on the other side of the table at a specific distance, it would turn into complete hierogyiph-looking gibberish. That is reproducible with any iPhone. I went back when the iPhone 17 was released and got the exact same result. Only enabling Apple ProRAW in the Pro phones resolves it. I showed it to the Apple employee next to me the first time and they were just as puzzled. It seems to help with clarity on small letters and the kind of background text you'll usually find in city pictures, which is what most people care about - but I find the results very poor, especially, as the author mentions, compared to older phones.
zeagle
Interesting the first comment on the post suggesting a Android phone. Ironically I went the other way and switched to an iPhone because it did a better job of text than my pixel 6 or 7 due to spherical aberration scanning receipts and I got fed up. Then stuck with the ecosystem. I guess grass is just always greener on the other side from small compact cameras and optics on these devices. Best solution seemed to be 2x zoom with a bit of distance.