For an Android aficionado like me, the iPhone 17 launch was a rollercoaster. For the first two weeks, I scoffed that Apple finally added a ProMotion display. Soon after, I was haunted by the one feature Apple decided to add that blows Android selfies out of the water. It's not the number of megapixels, nor is it an ultrawide camera. It's the new18 MP Center Stage camera on the iPhone 17.
It started when I recommended the iPhone 17 to a friend, feeling a little eerie about betraying my Android roots. However, in the first video call via the phone's Centre Stage camera, his face was beaming with happiness, looking at the camera quality and aspect ratio. Well, I caved and bought one, and while I still dislike iOS, I absolutely adore this front camera.
Centre Stage camera brings the flair
The iPhone 17 boasts an 18 MP Centre Stage camera sensor that captures a massive, ultrawide square field of view every time you hit the shutter button. This means that you can take a photo holding the phone vertically, and decide later if you want it to be a wide landscape shot or a vertical portrait shot. The phone effectively captures both orientations simultaneously.
In comparison, Android selfie cameras are rectangular sensors which can either take a portrait shot from up close (in comparison). To fit in more people, you will need to stretch your hands or rotate them to take a landscape portrait shot. However, with the iPhone's selfie snapper, the phone automatically adjusts to capture at a wider field of view based on the number of people trying to fit in.
While it's an ingenious solution, I do wish Apple had let users capture a full, raw 1:1 square image. Currently, the sensor captures a massive square canvas purely so that the software can crop it to either a perfect 4:3 image or a 16:9 photo, regardless of how you hold the phone.
Why Centre Stage on iPhone 17 is exceptional
As someone who uses Google Meet as the primary video calling platform, I love the Automatic Framing feature. Centre Stage works incredibly well as it automatically pans, adjusts and crops the camera to fit you into the frame. I take a lot of video calls in the kitchen, doing chores and when I'm moving, and Centre Stage is smart and slick enough to keep adjusting quickly and effortlessly.
Not to mention, it works across all apps like WhatsApp and Google Meet and not just FaceTime. Besides, it's of surprisingly high quality at 18 MP straight out of the camera, so the pictures are quite sharp. In fact, they are sharper and better than most Android phones with 50 MP front cameras, like the Vivo X300, which bins the images to 12 MP.
Therefore, the resolution gives it a good amount of headroom to pan around. This way, it isn't just zooming in on a low-resolution image. It is sliding a viewing window across a pretty high-resolution canvas.
The result? I look just as sharp standing in the far corner of my kitchen as I do sitting in front of the lens. It's one of those cases where hardware triumphs over software trickery, and almost feels like I have a dedicated cameraman.
The art of zero-crop stabilisation
We've seen this in professional cameras from Nikon, Canon and Sony, where they use 6K oversampling to produce high-quality 4K video. The extra resolution data is used for a camera stabilisation called Active SteadyShot. The iPhone 17's Centre Stage sensor pretty much does the exact same thing.
I found the video from the front camera of the iPhone 17 to be very stable. Due to the large square sensor, the iPhone 17 has massive overscan margins, just like professional cameras. This helps the phone stabilise well without cropping into your face or losing resolution.
Dear Android brands, It's about time you copied this
The 18 MP Centre Stage camera is Apple doing its best bit with hardware, and now it's time for Android manufacturers to copy it. Android phone brands already have the software panning part figured out with AI, and all they'd need to do is include a square camera sensor in, say, a 32 MP unit.
It's a bummer that the feature still hasn't been copied, especially when Android manufacturers have all been about cameras lately. Liquid Glass proved Android phones brands will copy anything remotely tied to Apple in terms of software, and it's about time they take some inspiration on the hardware front, too.
Sure, it might require slightly enlarging the lens and the punch-hole, but that's a small price to pay. A 32 MP square sensor would not only match the iPhone's utility but crush it in raw resolution, finally giving us a selfie camera that is as smart as the software powering it.
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