Apple deceived iPhone 16 and iPhone 17 users
Apple updated the compatibility information for new Photographic Styles 3 features after the iPhone 18 Pro presentation.
Initially, the company’s website stated that texture and grain control would arrive in iOS 27 on iPhone models supporting the latest generation of Photographic Styles. Now, the U.S. version of the site limits these features to iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max and iPhone Duo.
What’s new in Photographic Styles 3
Photographic Styles let you adjust the look of an image based on individual colors and skin tones, and on compatible models, you can tweak these settings even after taking the photo.
In Photographic Styles 3, textures have been added to color and tone settings. Users can choose Standard, Soft Skin, Glow, or Film and adjust the effect intensity. A separate Grain setting allows adding grain independently of the selected texture.
Apple has updated the compatibility description
Following the announcement in Apple’s website note, it was stated that the new texture and grain settings will be available in iOS 27 “on iPhone models supporting the latest generation of Photographic Styles”.
This wording implied broader support, as Apple has used the term “latest generation Photographic Styles” for this image processing system since the launch of the iPhone 16.
Later, the American version of the page was updated: the new Texture and Grain settings are now tied to the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and iPhone Duo.
However, the update did not roll out to all regional sites simultaneously. At the time of checking, the British, Irish, Canadian, and several other Apple pages still contained the previous wording regarding support for models with the latest generation of Photographic Styles.
Apple has not publicly explained the reason for the change. There is currently no basis to call this limitation purely a commercial decision: the company links Photographic Styles 3 to a new computational image processing pipeline, but does not specify which exact hardware constraints prevent implementing the new settings on earlier iPhones.
