So those pesky purple flares that keep cropping up in iPhone 5 photos have been confirmed by Apple, but Apple isn’t offering refunds or replacements, they’re offering advice. A email sent to a Gizmodo reader details Apple’s official stance:
Our engineering team just gave me this information and we recommend that you angle the camera away from the bright light source when taking pictures. The purple flare in the image provided is considered normal behavior for iPhone 5’s camera.
While this doesn’t confirm that the purple flare effect is partially due to Apple’s new sapphire lens, it certainly doesn’t rule it out. Tests done in the past week show that while you can get almost every cell phone camera (including the iPhone 4S) to display the aubergine glow, it’s the worst on the iPhone 5. The lenses for the iPhone 5 and 4S are identical except for the sapphire covering.
We at Ubergizmo didn’t notice any purple flaring while testing the iPhone 5, but then we don’t usually shoot directly into bright light. As per Apple’s advice, most photos turn out better if you angle the camera away from a bright light source. But some people do need to shoot into bright lights, and for those people, it’s annoying to see Apple being Apple again: it’s not a problem, it’s a feature.
Read the whole correspondence from Apple over at Gizmodo.
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