Roger Fingas
Continuing an aggressive campaign, Apple on Thursday released two new iPhone 7 Plus ads through its YouTube channel, once again concentrating on the phone's unique Portrait mode.
The first, "Profile Picture," suggests that the bokeh (blurred background) added by Portrait mode is what makes something worthy of being a profile image on a social media site. The second, "Boyfriend," applies a similar sentiment to taking photos of a significant other.
Each spot is only 15 seconds long, following in the style of other recent videos.
Apple has made the 7 Plus and its camera a centerpiece of its iPhone marketing around the world, for instance highlighting it in an ad tied to the start of Brazil's Carnival season. The device has a dual-lens system that not only enables the Portrait mode but offers 2x optical zoom, something relatively rare on smartphones. Most phones use "digital" zoom, which simply blows up an existing sensor image.
Apple is presumably concentrating on the 7 Plus because the phone has a higher cost and has proven surprisingly popular. During a recent results call, CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that the phone is enjoying a "higher portion of new product mix than we've ever seen with Plus models in the past."
The regular iPhone 7 is mostly an evolution from the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, with water resistance, a faster processor, and a better display, the main camera improvement being the addition of optical image stabilization — something that was previously reserved for Plus models.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
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Wesley Hilliard
7 Comments
Does portrait mode work in landscape?
Cute.
i don't use portrait mode myself, but it's nice to know it's there.
..and I can see why some would use it.
Simple ad. Very Apple.
"Boyfriend" or "Boyfriend." Very clever and fun. :)
I don't have a 7+ and I don't know anyone who does, but I would love to test this out. Can it be adjusted or is it just on or off? It would be great if you could apply it after the fact. As it is shown in the ads the effect is very pronounced. Often you just want to throw the background out just a little. Is it just a flat filter or does the effect respond to depth relative to the subject? I assume the former. Either way I'd love to have it available.
They could expand the feature beyond blur either by allowing layered exports or doing the effects themselves. Like this:
They could even have them animated in live photos. They don't have to do all the effects themselves, it can be like the iMessage stickers where people can sell effects. It's really time consuming manually cropping people out from backgrounds, they can still save as JPG for the main photo and just have accompanying PNG depth masks that can be corrected and effects can be applied to each masked layer.