iPhone 17 and 17 Professional are nonetheless restricted to 1080p 30fps spatial video recording, and iPhone Air cannot report spatial media in any respect.
Spatial video is Apple’s time period for stereoscopic 3D video utilizing the Apple HEVC Stereo Video Profile format of MV-HEVC. Recording it first turned attainable with the iPhone 15 Professional and Professional Max in 2023, restricted to 1080p 30fps. Then, final yr, Apple introduced spatial video recording to the bottom iPhone 16, increasing the aptitude to tons of of hundreds of thousands of individuals.
| Spatial Video Recording | Launch 12 months | |
| iPhone 15 | ❌ | 2023 |
| iPhone 15 Professional (Max) | 1080p 30fps | 2023 |
| iPhone 16 | 1080p 30fps | 2024 |
| iPhone 16 Professional (Max) | 1080p 30fps | 2024 |
| iPhone 16e | ❌ | 2025 |
| iPhone 17 | 1080p 30fps | 2025 |
| iPhone 17 Professional (Max) | 1080p 30fps | 2025 |
| iPhone Air | ❌ | 2025 |
We had hoped that the subsequent step, with the iPhone 17 vary, can be a rise within the decision and/or body price of spatial video recording. However that is not the case.
iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Professional, and iPhone 17 Professional Max are nonetheless restricted to 1080p 30fps. In the meantime, the iPhone Air solely has one lens, just like the price range iPhone 16e, so can’t report spatial media in any respect.
It is unclear why precisely the iPhone 17 Professional continues to be restricted to the identical 1080p 30fps because the iPhone 15 Professional.
The iPhone 17 Professional’s A19 Professional chip is considerably extra highly effective than the iPhone 15 Professional’s A17 Professional, and 2D video recording went from 4K 60fps to 4K 120fps with the A18 Professional final yr. Professional iPhones may even report each the entrance and a rear digicam concurrently. This means enhancements to the ISP (picture sign processor) on the chip – so why would not or not it’s able to 1080p 60fps for spatial video?
Maybe it comes all the way down to thermal concerns, digicam bandwidth limits, or another obscure bottleneck presently recognized solely to Apple’s engineers.
We have reached out to Apple for an evidence, however the firm is famously opaque in the case of the specifics of technical limitations like these, so we’re unlikely to get a solution. But when we do, we’ll let you understand, because the iPhone 17 announcement has left many 3D media lovers sorely upset.
