CNET‘s Patrick Holland recently had the rare privilege of a guided tour through Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, and got a behind-the-scenes look at the secret testing labs where the tech giant dialled in the iPhone 16’s superior audio and video recording capabilities.
“The iPhone is such a ubiquitous recording device and gets used in so many different environments that we want to make sure that we’re able to capture the memory that our users are trying to capture in the truest form,” Apple’s senior director of acoustics engineering, Ruchir Dave, told Holland as he showed off the company’s in-house long wave anechoic chamber.
An anechoic chamber, with all its surfaces covered in sound-absorbing foam, eliminates echoes. It’s almost eerily quiet, and this is where Apple tested and calibrated the iPhone 16’s four-microphone array with the express purpose of capturing crisp, accurate sound.
“The approach we took was to go after both quality as well as utility. And as part of that, we developed a novel microphone component that allows us to deliver some of the best acoustic performance in a phone product,” Dave added. Apple’s efforts also led to the creation of features like Audio Mix, which allows users to remove background noise, enhance voice clarity, and remix sound in post-production.
Holland was then ushered to Apple’s soundproof studios where several testers take perceptual audio tests to determine how audio on the iPhone should sound and help the company fine-tune what iPhones play back. Here, Apple executives explained how Audio Mix works and what Apple wants to achieve with it.
“We really want to make sure that anyone who’s taking advantage of this feature [Audio Mix] is going to appreciate it and enjoy it,” said Francesca Sweet, Apple’s director of iPhone product marketing.
The iPhone has long reigned supreme when it comes to video recording prowess. It’s just been a cut above the rest — a benchmark for other phone makers to aspire to. As competitors like Samsung and Google shuffle to catch up, the iPhone 16 Pro added to this legacy with its ability to record and playback 4K 120fps Dolby Vision slow-motion video.
Holland’s last stop on his tour of Apple Park was the video verification lab, a movie theatre-like testing room that helped Apple calibrate Dolby Vision video recording and playback on the iPhone 16.
“We use this theater to tune the video playback experiences so that when you play back these videos in a dark room, in an office environment or even under the sun, that you get the same perceptual experience you will get as if you’re watching a video in the theater,” Apple’s director of video engineering, Sean Yang, told Holland.
“4K 120 is a massive amount of it [data]. If you think about it, it’s 1 billion pixels per second,” said Yang.
All of these labs (and more) came together to make for a pro-level, billion-pixel recording experience on the iPhone 16. You can check out Holland’s full inside look at Apple’s secret iPhone 16 camera labs over on CNET.
