The 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus could come with "dual-lens" camera, according to a KGI Securities report by notorious Apple analyst MingChi Kuo that was given to Mac Rumors.
The "dual-lens" camera could help with zooming, better low-light performance, and a thinner design so it doesn't protrude from the iPhone 7's body, like it current does in the iPhone 6 and 6s.
For the dual-lens camera, Kuo reports that Apple would make use of technology it acquired from Israeli camera tech company, LinX, which claims to bring "SLR" quality to smaller cameras you'd find in a phone.
SLR cameras are much bigger than the camera modules you'd find in a smartphone. By virtue of being dedicated for taking pictures and having bigger and better parts, SLR cameras and their lenses can take better pictures than even the best smartphone camera.
The difference is especially noticeable in low-light conditions and zooming.
Apple would supposedly use LinX's algorithms to make pictures look better in different situations. For example, one of the algorithms would help simulate an SLR camera's zoom lens, called optical zooming, which requires moving parts.
Since the iPhone's camera doesn't have moving parts, it can't zoom optically. Instead, it can only zoom digitally by expanding the pixels and making what you see on the iPhone's screen look bigger, which doesn't look anywhere near as good as an SLR camera lens' optical zoom.
Having two lenses also means the iPhone 7 could perform well in low-light situations, as two cameras can absorb more light than one. It would be a great improvement over the current iPhone 6s camera, which performs relatively poorly in low-light situations compared to Android rivals, especially the Google Nexus 5X and 6P.
The HTC One M8 had a dual-lens camera that was mostly used for "re-focusing" so that subjects can be refocused in a picture after it's been taken. It never took off, and HTC removed the feature in the One M9. Maybe Apple feels the technology has improved enough to reintroduce the dual-lens.
