It’s easy to be wowed by the photos Apple shows at the yearly iPhone launch event. Pre-production models are put in the hands of professional photographers skilled enough to deliver results with any camera.
What will pictures look like from the iPhone of an average user?
One Twitter user allegedly got her hands on an iPhone 11 Pro Max that, if legit, shows the promise of Night mode, a new camera feature that comes with the iPhone 11 lineup and iOS 13.
iPhone 11 Night mode should brighten up the pix
New York model and agency owner Coco Rocha posted side-by-side photos of a night-time street scene. One underexposed picture came from her iPhone X, while a brighter shot of the same subject came from what Rocha claims is an iPhone 11 Pro Max.
It is only one set of pictures and Rocha told followers, “Don’t ask me how but I got my hands on an iPhone 11 tonight!” Her followers are then shushed by the emoji for quiet.
Photos posted on Twitter are stripped of all EXIF data, which would show how a photo was captured, including the type of camera used.
At a glance, the handset that produced the bright photo rendered decent results in the foreground, especially with the skin tones of the subject.
The colors of the neon lights flashing in the background got a little crazy and blown out but that could happen with any digital camera. It doesn’t ruin the image.
Night mode, which Apple unveiled with new iPhones during its fall product launch Tuesday, activates automatically under poor lighting to improve camera performance in situations that smartphones, until recently, typically failed.

Photo: Apple
Apple is not the first to use software to bring light where there is darkness. Google’s Pixel 3 gets the highest marks for low-light performance thanks to a feature called Night Sight.
You can be sure we will see side-by-side comparisons with the Pixel 3 once the new iPhone hits more hands.