iPhone 14 Pro owners complain of shaking camera in third-party apps

Owners of the iPhone 14 Pro are reporting problems recording video in third-party apps with the camera, with the smartphone producing blurry and shaking footage.

Apple's update to the iPhone 14 Pro includes a number of camera changes, including a 48-megapixel sensor and an Action Mode to generate smooth video. However, it seems third-party apps that use the camera are encountering issues with the new hardware.

A number of users are discovering the camera module is shaking when in use in apps including Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. First reported by 9to5Mac, the issue is causing video recorded using the camera within the apps to be unpublishable, due to the constant erratic movement.

Posts to social media including Reddit claim there to be a lot of jitters, believed to be a shaking of the optical image stabilization (OIS) system. In the case of the iPhone 14 Pro, the 48MP Main camera has Apple's second-generation Sensor Shift OIS, which physically moves the sensor, while the other uses an older and more conventional OIS system.

Some users claim they can see and hear the shaking and mechanical movement when they use the third-party app's camera features. In one video demonstrating the issue, the iPhone is seen slightly moving and generating a grinding noise.

It is unknown how many iPhones could be affected by the issue. AppleInsider tried, and failed, to reproduce the bug independently.

While the problem manifests with third-party apps, it doesn't seem to occur when using the default camera app included in iOS 16. This may indicate that there could be a software problem that needs to be addressed by the apps in how they communicate and work with the camera module.

It's also plausible that Apple could release an update to iOS 16 that eliminates the bug. At this time, it is unclear what Apple's response will be to the phenomena.

9 Comments

CheeseFreeze 7 Years · 1339 comments

About 2 years ago

You’d expect their API’s to be used by themselves, so there’s no difference between a 1st and 3rd party app in that regard. It’s an abstraction layer in a sense.

Isn’t it just a matter of updating these apps to call the latest version of the API?

The problem is Apple’s fault. They didn’t announce their new hardware and kept their new software the same despite releasing iOS16 betas to keep their hardware a secret until launch. No third party developer had the opportunity to update on time. Lame.

urahara 13 Years · 733 comments

CheeseFreeze said:

You’d expect their API’s to be used by themselves, so there’s no difference between a 1st and 3rd party app in that regard. It’s an abstraction layer in a sense.
Isn’t it just a matter of updating these apps to call the latest version of the API?

The problem is Apple’s fault. They didn’t announce their new hardware and kept their new software the same despite releasing iOS16 betas to keep their hardware a secret until launch. No third party developer had the opportunity to update on time. Lame.

It seems you are speculating on that topic. Couldn’t it be a developer’s fault?
It seems that not every user who uses those 3d party apps experience the problem. Appleinsider, as mentioned in the article, couldn’t reproduce the issue.
So it’s not purely the 3d party app, or how they use API. Other factors could be involved.

mikethemartian 18 Years · 1493 comments

urahara said:

CheeseFreeze said:

You’d expect their API’s to be used by themselves, so there’s no difference between a 1st and 3rd party app in that regard. It’s an abstraction layer in a sense.
Isn’t it just a matter of updating these apps to call the latest version of the API?

The problem is Apple’s fault. They didn’t announce their new hardware and kept their new software the same despite releasing iOS16 betas to keep their hardware a secret until launch. No third party developer had the opportunity to update on time. Lame.

It seems you are speculating on that topic. Couldn’t it be a developer’s fault?
It seems that not every user who uses those 3d party apps experience the problem. Appleinsider, as mentioned in the article, couldn’t reproduce the issue.
So it’s not purely the 3d party app, or how they use API. Other factors could be involved.

Sure, it’s the developer’s fault.

markbyrn 14 Years · 662 comments

The article begs the key question, 'have the 3rd party apps been updated for the new iPhone camera?' From what I read elsewhere, third-party camera apps like Halide are fine. So like the problem is with the social media apps.

markbyrn said:

The article begs the key question, 'have the 3rd party apps been updated for the new iPhone camera?' From what I read elsewhere, third-party camera apps like Halide are fine. So like the problem is with the social media apps.

Social apps might have been updated for iOS16 already; they’ve had access to it for quite some time.
What they didn’t get was Apple’s most recent software connecting to their camera API, because Apple didn’t provide it to them.
In theory they perhaps only have to recompile with minimum changed but now using their latest framework. It’s probably a very easy fix since the third party developers don’t have direct access to hardware anyway.