Long before Apple announced variable aperture as a feature of the iPhone 18 Pro, a quieter story had already played out across the Android landscape — one of ambition, experimentation, and retreat. Beginning with Samsung's Galaxy S9 in 2018, manufacturers including Sony, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Honor each took their turn wrestling with the mechanical complexity of letting light itself become a creative choice. Most eventually stepped back, finding the engineering cost too steep; a few pressed on, convinced the control it offered photographers was worth the burden. Apple's arrival marks not an inve
Android Makers Beat Apple to Variable Aperture Cameras by Years
Most companies abandoned it. Huawei kept betting.
Mark
So Apple is finally adding variable aperture to the iPhone 18 Pro. Is this actually new technology, or did someone else do it first?
Mimi
Android makers got there years earlier. Samsung's Galaxy S9 in 2018 was the first phone with it—you could switch between f/1.5 and f/2.4 depending on lighting. Sony, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Honor all followed.
Luke
But here's the thing—most of them stopped. Samsung dropped it after a few years. Sony never made a second generation. Xiaomi had it for two flagship cycles, then removed it. Only Huawei kept pushing it, even into mid-range phones.
Mark
Why would they abandon something if it works?
Mimi
Complexity and cost. The mechanical parts add weight and thickness. They're prone to wear. Companies had to weigh whether the feature justified the engineering effort and the extra manufacturing steps.
Luke
And we should note—the source doesn't say Apple's version is better or worse. We don't know if Apple solved the durability problem or if they're just accepting the same trade-offs everyone else did.
Mark
So Huawei kept it. Why?
Mimi
The company seemed to believe in it as a differentiator. They expanded it to mid-range phones, which is unusual. Most companies keep experimental features in flagships only.
Luke
But we don't have Huawei's internal reasoning. We know what they did, not why they made that choice differently than Samsung or Sony did.
Mark
And Honor is still using it?
Mimi
Yes. The Magic6 Pro and Magic7 Pro both have variable aperture. Though Honor's pitch was more about AI features than the camera itself.
Luke
Which is telling. Even Honor doesn't lead with variable aperture as the main story. It's one feature among many. That might say something about how much customers actually care about it.
El Pulso
- Apple's iPhone 18 Pro is being celebrated for variable aperture, but Android makers pioneered — and largely abandoned — the same technology across nearly a decade of experimentation.
- The mechanical demands of moving aperture blades inside a slim phone body proved punishing: added weight, thickness, wear-prone parts, and steep manufacturing costs drove Samsung, Sony, and Xiaomi to quietly phase the feature out.
- Each manufacturer charted a different exit — Samsung redirected engineering resources, Sony pivoted to continuous optical zoom, and Xiaomi cited mechanical wear and a desire to close the 'telephoto gap' with fixed-aperture alternatives.
- Huawei defied the trend entirely, expanding variable aperture from flagship to mid-range devices and treating it as a long-term platform rather than a passing experiment.
- Honor, the most recent Android adopter before Apple, has kept the feature alive in its Magic series, suggesting the technology still has committed believers even as the industry majority moved on.
Long before Apple announced variable aperture as a feature of the iPhone 18 Pro, a quieter story had already played out across the Android landscape — one of ambition, experimentation, and retreat. Beginning with Samsung's Galaxy S9 in 2018, manufacturers including Sony, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Honor each took their turn wrestling with the mechanical complexity of letting light itself become a creative choice. Most eventually stepped back, finding the engineering cost too steep; a few pressed on, convinced the control it offered photographers was worth the burden. Apple's arrival marks not an invention, but an inheritance.
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro arrives with variable aperture — the ability to manually control how much light reaches the sensor and shape depth of field in real time. It is a genuine capability, but not a new idea. Android manufacturers spent years living with it, and most of them eventually walked away.
Samsung was first. The Galaxy S9, released in March 2018, offered a dual-aperture system that switched between f/1.5 and f/2.4, marketed as mimicking the human eye. The camera also captured twelve versions of each shot to reduce noise and powered 960fps slow motion. Samsung carried the feature through the S20 and Note 10 before concluding that the mechanical complexity and manufacturing cost simply weren't worth it.
Sony took a more specialized path. The 2021 Xperia Pro-I, built in partnership with Zeiss, paired a variable f/2.0–f/4.0 aperture with a large 1.0-inch sensor and was the first phone to shoot 4K at 120fps. It was a photographer's device, but Sony never followed it with a successor carrying the same feature — pivoting instead to continuous optical zoom before largely withdrawing from the U.S. market.
Huawei went the other direction entirely. Starting with the Mate 50 Pro in 2022, the company built variable aperture into successive flagships and eventually brought it to mid-range Nova handsets. Where others saw a dead end, Huawei saw a platform worth sustaining.
Xiaomi partnered with Leica and made a serious run at the feature across the 13 Ultra and 14 Ultra, refining a stepless ten-blade aperture mechanism. Then the 15 Ultra launched without it — weight, thickness, and mechanical wear cited as the reasons, alongside a strategic shift toward zoom and advanced pixel-level dynamic range technology.
Honor joined the conversation in 2024 with the Magic6 Pro, pairing variable aperture with a 180-megapixel telephoto and leaning heavily on AI features as its headline. Its Magic7 Pro still carries a physical two-step variable aperture, keeping the company among the few still committed.
The appeal of the feature is real: sharper group shots, better low-light performance, manual creative control over blur and motion. The cost is equally real: moving blades, added mass, and mechanical wear. For most of the industry, that equation didn't hold. For Huawei and Honor, it still does. For Apple, arriving years later, something in the calculation finally changed.
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro is arriving with a variable aperture camera—a feature that lets photographers manually control how much light the sensor absorbs, adjusting depth of field and creative possibilities on the fly. But the company is not the pioneer here. Android makers spent years experimenting with the same technology, starting with Samsung's Galaxy S9 in March 2018, and most of them have since moved on.
Samsung's S9 and S9+ were the first phones to offer this dual-aperture system, switching between f/1.5 for bright conditions and f/2.4 for low light. The company marketed it as mimicking the human eye's ability to adapt. The camera also captured twelve versions of each shot to optimize contrast and reduce noise, and it powered 960-frame-per-second slow-motion video. Samsung kept the feature through the Galaxy S20 and Note 10, but eventually abandoned it. The mechanical complexity and manufacturing cost made the trade-off unworkable; the company decided its engineering resources were better spent elsewhere.
Sony took a different approach. In 2021, partnering with Zeiss, the company released the Xperia Pro-I with an f/2.0 to f/4.0 variable aperture and a 12-megapixel 1.0-inch main sensor. It was marketed as the first smartphone to record 4K video at 120 frames per second. The phone was built for photography enthusiasts, with a triple-camera system and a 3D depth sensor. But Sony never released a second-generation Pro-I with the feature. Instead, the company pivoted to continuous optical zoom, moving glass elements between focal lengths like 85mm and 125mm. Sony has largely exited the U.S. market since then.
Huawei took the opposite path. In 2022, the Mate 50 Pro introduced what the company called Ultra Aperture XMAGE Camera, offering ten selectable aperture sizes and a 50-megapixel sensor with an f/1.4 aperture that absorbed 24 percent more light than its predecessor. Unlike Samsung and Sony, Huawei kept betting on the technology. The P60 Pro, Pura 70 Pro lineup, and more recently the Pura 80 Pro and 80 Ultra all retained variable aperture. The company even brought it to mid-range phones—the Nova 13 Pro and Nova 14 Pro—with an f/1.4 to f/4.0 range. Huawei became the rare case of a manufacturer that saw the feature as worth the ongoing investment.
Xiaomi made noise about variable aperture too. The company partnered with Leica and released the 13 Ultra in 2023 with a dual-step mechanism, then refined it in the 14 Ultra with a stepless ten-blade aperture. But after two years of promotion, Xiaomi quietly removed the feature from the 15 Ultra, reverting to a fixed f/1.63 aperture. The company cited weight, thickness, and mechanical wear as reasons. It also wanted to solve what it called the "telephoto gap" by offering continuous mechanical optical zoom instead, and to add sensors with pixel-level dynamic range technology that could handle extreme light contrast without the extra motor.
Honor became the latest Android maker to embrace variable aperture before Apple. In 2024, the Magic6 Pro featured a 50-megapixel main camera with an f/1.4 to f/2.0 aperture, alongside a 180-megapixel telephoto with 2.5x optical zoom and a 50-megapixel ultrawide. But variable aperture was not the phone's headline. Honor emphasized AI features—Magic Capsule notifications and Magical Portal, which could recognize addresses in messages and route users to maps. The company has continued the commitment; its latest Magic7 Pro still includes a physical two-step variable aperture.
What variable aperture actually does is straightforward: it lets users choose how much light enters the sensor and control depth of field manually. Group photos stay sharp across subjects. Low-light shots improve. Photographers gain creative control over lighting and motion blur. The cost is mechanical complexity—moving aperture blades inside the phone adds weight, thickness, and parts prone to wear. For most companies, the benefit did not justify the engineering burden. For Huawei and Honor, it remains worth the effort. For Apple, arriving late to the feature, the calculation apparently changed.
Citas Notables
Samsung said the Galaxy S9 camera worked like the human eye, adjusting to different lighting conditions— Samsung marketing
Huawei claimed the Mate 50 Pro's f/1.4 aperture absorbed 24 percent more light than the previous model— Huawei
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