8MP camera of iPhone 5 may take 4MP photos in low light

One of the biggest things that Apple had revealed about the iPhone 5 during the press event earlier this month was the camera. The iPhone 5 comes with an 8 megapixel camera that has improved performance over the iPhone 4S camera because of internal tweaks. According to Slashgear though, the iPhone 5’s camera only gives 4 megapixel pictures if the night mode of the camera is activated.

The website explains that this is due to the pixel compression technique that the iPhone 5 uses for low light situations. With a standard smartphone, low light shots don’t come out very well because there is a lot of noise. Smartphones such as the Nokia PureView 808 and iPhone 5 use an image compression technique that reduces the noise for low light shots.

The camera takes 4 megapixel shots in low light scenarios

According to Apple, the iPhone 5’s “ISP detects when you are in extremely low light and switches the sensor context to combine 4 pixels into one, creating an additional 2 f-stop brightness and sensitivity.” Along with this, the iPhone 5 employs a technique that compares pixels with adjacent ones and identifies the pixels that are out of place.

It was recently reported that the iPhone 5 has been facing some complaints from purchasers about the number of scratches that the device seems to accumulate. A couple of posts on sites such as MacRumors indicated that most of the problems are limited to the black-coloured version of iPhone 5. "Mine arrived today with small scratches on the right out of the box. Looks like they chipped the anodised coating putting the screen in, and there is a small mark on the lower back too, by the glass section," the Daily Mail quoted MacRumors commenter spr97ajm, as saying. "I'm not going to worry about it, but it shows the coating is soft, and will chip over time," he added. Another forum user Sick z33 said that his black iPhone also came with a ''couple of the nicks'', the paper said. "Will use the phone till Apple decides to release something regarding the issue," the smartphone owner concluded.

Made entirely out of aluminium and glass, the iPhone 5 weighs a mere 112gm and is 20 percent lighter than the iPhone 4S, and is the thinnest iPhone yet at 7.6mm thick. Apple has chosen to debut iOS 6 with the iPhone 5 and the new OS includes Apple's own Maps app, an updated version of Siri and lots more. Overall, the new iPhone has been upgraded in almost all respects.

One of the biggest changes to iOS is the addition of Apple’s own Maps app in the place of Google Maps, which Apple has done away with. The new Maps app has a built-in search for local points of interest, with over 100 million possible suggestions. Other features of the Maps app include navigation, routing, 3D maps, satellite imagery – that wraps around the 3D maps – and the ability to get directions directly through Siri. Most of the standard features of the Maps app, including satellite view, are available in almost all countries the iPhone ships to.

Siri has also been updated and new features include support for more languages, easy access to sports scores, restaurant recommendations and movie listings, Siri and Facebook-enabled apps such as Photos, Safari and Maps; and Shared Photo Streams via iCloud.

More information about the Apple iPhone 5 here.