With the introduction of iPhone XR, every phone in Apple’s lineup now supports depth capture. But the XR is unique: it’s the first iPhone to do it with a single lens. As we were starting to test and optimize Halide for it, we found both advantages and disadvantages. In this post we’ll take a look at three different ways iPhones generate depth data, what makes the iPhone XR so special, and show off Halide’s new 1.11 update, which enables you to do things with the iPhone XR that the regular camera app won’t. Depth Capture Method 1: Dual Camera Disparity Humans perceive depth with the help of two eyes. Our eyes may only a few inches apart, but our brains detect subtle differences between image. The greater difference, or disparity, the closer an object. The iPhone 7 Plus introduced a dual-camera system, which enables a similar way to construct depth. By taking two photos at the same time, each from a slightly different position, we can construct a disparity map. There’s a lot of guesswork involved when matches images. Add video noise and things get even rougher. A great deal of effort goes into filtering the data, additional post processing that guesses how to..