The iPhone 5s still offers one of the best cameras on the smartphone market, but it lacks one feature photographers have been clamoring for: optical image stabilization, or OIS for short. The hardware technology, which is in use on other smartphones including the HTC One (M7) and the LG G2, allows you to shoot clear photos even while moving around, like while riding in a bumpy car. Several rumors have suggested that Apple was going to add OIS to its iPhone 6, but now a fresh report out of China says it's going to take advantage of a different technology.
Apple will instead opt for electronic image stabilization, or EIS, according to an analyst out of China who posted the rumor on Weibo. Electronic image stabilization would rely on software to clean up any blurring in an image, instead of hardware technology that OIS relies on to create better photos. That may raise some concern for folks who prefer to rely on hardware for image stabilization, since software doesn't typically work as well. Still, Apple hasn't really let anyone down with its cameras in the past, it can easily add OIS if it wants to, and it's probably adding EIS for a reason. Maybe it has a really solid algorithm that allows for quicker shooting?
For now this is just a rumor that originated from Sun Chang Xu, an analyst with ESM-China, and we really don't know which way Apple is going to move with its camera. The iPhone 6 is expected sometime in September, but we may start to hear more about what type of camera to expect as leaks spill out ahead of that date.
