Apple Vision Pro is struggling to get a foothold in the market thanks to its sky-high $3,499 price tag, but it seems that iPhone users without that kind of budget may soon get a little taste of one element of it soon.
On his Front Page Tech YouTube channel, Jon Prosser has revealed a purported redesign for the iOS 19 camera app, and it “mirrors the design ethos from visionOS”.
Here's your first look at iOS 19 - YouTube
Prosser didn’t include the video of what he actually saw for fear of causing trouble for his internal source. Instead, the channel has re-created it as animated renders, so you can judge it for yourself.
The new-look interface features translucent menus for camera controls, making space for a larger viewfinder. At the bottom of the screen are two options — camera and video — and tapping each one brings up options for different settings, such as aspect ratio, depth, styles, exposure, timers and more. Resolution and frame rate settings, meanwhile, are hidden away at the top of the screen.
For comparison, you can see the Vision Pro interface in our video below.
Apple Vision Pro: Main interface and scrolling - YouTube
You may have a sense of deja vu at this point, as a similar camera app leak last April pointed to a Vision Pro-like redesign for iOS 18. That makes us think that the rumor wasn’t wrong last time, just delayed for the next version of the operating system for some reason.
A redesign beyond the camera?
While the streamlining of the camera app itself is certainly promising, it’s what this suggests for the direction of iOS itself that’s more exciting.
If the camera app is getting a Vision Pro-style makeover, could that mean the rest of the iOS 19 is too? Prosser has a go at imagining what that might look like with the following render, packed with circular icons.
“This would be the biggest and most significant redesign since iOS 7, easily,” Prosser says.
But there’s another option he thinks is more likely. “Instead, perhaps, the VisionOS UI elements exist moreso around iOS itself,” he says. “In other words, the core apps: like the camera app, like the Music app, the Notes app, the Wallet app and so on.
“I realize that this is maybe the most underwhelming option I could have given you, but if you are asking for my opinion — which you are not — my opinion is that this is the option I am moreso leaning towards for… reasons.”
He doesn’t elaborate on what those “reasons” are, but this makes sense. If the biggest bar to Vision Pro adoption was a lack of familiarity, quickly unifying the UI between devices would make sense. But it’s clear that the $3,499 price tag is the issue, something Apple may address with a cheaper version down the line.
More importantly, more than half the smartphones in North America run iOS. It’s familiar to millions of people, and plenty of those will stick with the iPhone purely because they know where everything is and how to get the most out of it as it is.
It might sound silly for tech enthusiasts who revel in design changes and new features, but that familiarity is actually a big selling point for lots of people. Jettisoning something so familiar for something broadly untested would be a huge and unnecessary gamble.
If Apple genuinely does believe the Vision OS way is better, then it would make more sense to introduce it gradually over multiple iOS updates. In other words, this might be the first step towards a full redesign rather than changing everything all at once.
We should find out what Apple has in mind in around six months when the iOS 19 beta is made available to developers. For those who don’t want to mess around with potentially unstable early software, a full release will likely be scheduled alongside the iPhone 17 in September.
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