HEIF & HEVC Camera Formats in iOS 11 Will Save You Up to 50% of Storage Space

Uzair Ghani
HEIF

Apple introduced two new formats for the camera in iOS 11 - HEIF and HEVC. Both can help save up to 50% of storage space while shooting photos and videos.

Real-World Tests Show that HEIF and HEVC Formats Aren't a Gimmick at All

Apple packed new features in almost every corner of iOS 11. Even in the Camera app, things have been elevated by offering two new formats for shooting photos and videos - HEIF and HEVC, respectively. These formats replace the age-old JPEG and h.264 formats, which means that you can theoretically shoot twice as many photos and videos as the newer formats offer up to 50% of storage space savings.

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These storage savings don't come with a compromise either. The new HEIF and HEVC formats offer the same amount of quality as before, but with the added benefit of storage savings. In order to prove this, 9to5Mac head out with an iPhone with iOS 11 Beta 1 installed on it, and the results are actually quite spectacular.

In testing I went out at night and took a photo and video of the New York City skyline. The outputted JPG image weighed in at 2 MB, while the HEIC image came in at 1.2 MB. Similarly, the h.264 encoded video was 61.2 MB, while the h.265 (HEVC) video was 33 MB.

Interestingly, Apple has been using the HEVC video format for a long time. In fact, it does so while we make a FaceTime call. This allows for high-quality conversations while saving a lot of bandwidth. It was only logical for the company to bring the format in other areas of iOS as well.

So yes, HEIF and HEVC aren't gimmicky at all, and they actually do work. This means that the format is good news for those with base storage configurations on an iPhone or iPad.

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