Does the M4 iPad Professional have a mysterious sensor within the digicam?

Apple this month announced a new generation of the iPad Prowhich comes with the M4 chip and a slimmer design. However, the company has quietly removed the ultra-wide lens from the rear camera, returning to a single wide lens and LiDAR scanner. But some customers have noticed an extra hole in the rear camera. Is it a mysterious new sensor?

M4 iPad Pro has a ‘mysterious’ new sensor

Well, the short answer is yes. The previous generation iPad Pro had two camera lenses (wide and ultra-wide), the LiDAR scanner, the LED flash, and microphone. As for the new models, they have the wide camera, LiDAR scanner, microphone, LED flash, and a sensor. But what exactly is this sensor?

According to the User Guide for the new iPad Pro, this is an Ambient Light Sensor. Although iPads already have a similar sensor on the front of the display to control automatic brightness and the True Tone feature, Apple has probably added another sensor on the back to improve the camera.

More specifically, Apple said during the keynote that the M4 iPad Pro has a new generation “adaptive” True Tone flash that detects ambient light conditions to improve document scanning by removing shadows using hardware and AI. This new Ambient Light Sensor is probably used to adjust the color of the adaptive True Tone flash when taking photos of documents.

If Apple also has plans to use this sensor for some feature that hasn’t been released yet, that’s something we’ll have to wait to find out.

The new M4 iPad Pro is now available in the US for prices starting at $999.