Bug 247737 – [iOS] REGRESSION of minimal focus distance of the back camera on the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: DUPLICATE
• Component: WebRTC

[Mo]

What?
- The newest iPhone Pro models have a minimum/closest focus distance that is much larger than that of other iPhones. 
- With the back camera, the affected models cannot not focus on any object that is closer than ~15cm.
  In comparison, all other tested iPhones including the non-pro versions could focus on objects as close as 4cm.
- Affected are iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13 Pro Max, iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max

Why?
- Many developers rely on capturing images and video at short range.
- There are several use cases which are disrupted by this issue. Some of them which are especially interesting for web apps: 
    - Capturing pictures of documents and ID cards in web forms
    - Taking macro pictures with web applications
    - Reading text, QR-codes or barcodes from the browser

How?
- A possible solution could be using the ultra-wide camera, which has a much closer focus distance. 
  However, only one of the three back cameras is made available in WebRTC 
  (related bug report: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=221752)
- Even more promising: the native camera app on iOS is already using composite camera devices which automatically switch camera depending on the scene. 
  Using one of these as the default back camera that is exposed on WebRTC would create a lot of value and help to help mitigate the issue.
  See: 
    - builtInDualWideCamera: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/avcapturedevice/devicetype/3377620-builtindualwidecamera
    - builtInTripeCamera: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/avcapturedevice/devicetype/3377621-builtintriplecamera

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/102468358>

[Mo]

Any thought on this topic?
Thanks for the feedback!

[Eric Carlson]

This will be fixed by the changes for https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=248054

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 248054 ***