If You Love Using Your iPhone In The Dark, Apple's Newest Feature Is For You

Unless you live under a rock, you've probably already heard by now that Apple unveiled three brand spankin' new iPhones to the world this week. Happy Apple week, y'all! And while all of the fun juicy deets about the new features like facial recognition and animojis have been discussed and debated by both detractors and proponents of these new technologies, there's another feature that, while getting far less play, is still something you should know about on Apple's new iPhones: It's called true tone display, and it will be available on all three new iPhone models including the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and of course, Apple's pièce de résistance, the iPhone X.

While it's a pretty basic feature, it's also slightly technical — and if you're anything like me, even the utterance of the word technical is cause for mild anxiety coupled with a slight panic attack, cold sweats and constant SnackWell's Devil Food Cookie Cake binging. Just me? So, to spare you, here's the breakdown.

To put it in laywoman's terms, true tone acts an automated color corrector for your iPhone when you're in dimmer settings. Basically, by using the iPhones built-in sensor, your iPhone will measure the amount of ambient light and will detect the amount of light, color and brightness and will adjust accordingly to reflect the accurate, or "true tone," on your phones display. So, say for example you're at a picnic in Central Park and you want to lay back and catch up with some of the latest Bustle articles. It may be super bright outside so your phone's censor will adjust to the natural light and automatically white balance the display making it a whole lot easier for you to read. The same thing can be applied to low-lighting situations, like if you want to read on your iPhone or iPad in bed, and that's really the beauty of true tone is that it happens automatically on your phones display (by the way, true tone is on by default in your settings so you do have the option of turning it on or off if you want to.)

One of the easiest analogies of what true tone is, is the great Blue and Black or White and Gold Dress debate of 2015. The argument, it turned out, came down to light and how your eye perceived the image and colors of the dress. That transference of light from your eye to your brain is true tone, and it works in a similar way. As your eye adjusts its perception of color and light depending on the temperature and brightness of your immediate environment.

While true tone isn't exactly a new technology, in fact it's been around for quite some time, given the advance technology of the new iPhones,

If you want to get super technical about it, Apple released this statement about true tone technology when it was first released on an earlier iteration of iPad.

"The 9.7-inch iPad Pro features advanced display technologies, including a True Tone display, which uses new four-channel sensors to dynamically adjust the white balance of the display to match the light around you for a more natural and accurate, paper-white viewing experience. The advanced Retina display is 25 percent brighter and 40 percent less reflective than iPad Air 2, making content even easier to see indoors and out. It uses the same wider color gamut as the iMac with Retina 5K display, delivering 25 percent greater color saturation for more vivid colors. A custom timing controller, photo alignment and oxide TFT deliver incredible color, contrast and clarity."

That's a lot of mumbo jumbo and if you ask me, the best way to understand true tone is to just play around with it when you get your phone and see how it works for yourself!