>In the iPhone 11 and 12, I found it useful to have the ultra-wide in my pocket— way more useful than the iPhone’s Panorama Mode— but I still mostly avoided it.

>In the iPhone 11 and 12, I found it useful to have the ultra-wide in my pocket— way more useful than the iPhone’s Panorama Mode— but I still mostly avoided it. It was ‘fixed focus’, which means there is no way for the lens to adjust what is sharp. It was designed so all of the frame was in focus. This caused smudgy images, trading clarity for a wider field of view. This part doesn't make a lot of sense. The iPhone 12 ultrawide is fixed focus, so it's sharp if your subject is at infinity (which is pretty close, given the focal length) and blurry if it's not. There's no reason why having a fixed focus should yield 'smudgy images'. I guess maybe the article is suggesting that the fixed focus is set at a hyperfocal distance to increase the sharpness of closer subjects. I'm not sure if that would really make sense for such a short focal length, though, as the majority of elements in the frame would typically be at infinity.