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qualcomm

Time to come Android phones could come up equipped with some fancy new photographic camera features cheers to applied science beingness developed by Qualcomm. The company has even so to announce its next-generation Snapdragon system-on-a-chip (SoC), but it's already showing off some wild things it'll exist able to do. An updated version of Qualcomm'due south image signal processor (Internet access provider) will allow for advanced camera features similar active depth sensing. Device makers won't even need to do any of the hard stuff — they can simply license the applied science.

With an upcoming version of the Snapdragon SoC, Qualcomm will roll out the second-generation Spectra Internet service provider. The Isp is part of the SoC alongside the CPU, GPU, modem, and other components. Spectra's chore is to take the output of the photographic camera sensor and procedure the image you lot are somewhen shown. That can involve the use of machine learning and custom algorithms to eliminate dissonance or acuminate details, only Qualcomm started planning for the time to come of imaging last year. That'due south when information technology launched the Spectra Module Programme, which offered OEMs drop-in camera module solutions that took full advantage of the Internet service provider.

The second-generation Spectra role will add support for 3 new camera modules to Snapdragon-powered devices: passive depth-sensing, active depth sensing, and iris scanning. Passive depth sensing is something we've seen on a number of phones. It uses two camera sensors to capture images in stereo and estimate distance in the aforementioned way our optics operate. This characteristic has worked okay on some phones, only it's usually disappointing.

The active depth mode could be much more than interesting. Qualcomm'south agile depth sensing (see to a higher place) uses an IR lamp to shine a design of invisible (to u.s.a.) dots on an object. An IR sensor on the phone can see the dots and accurately record their altitude. That data tin can be used to edit and manipulate the image from a standard visible light camera module. This sounds vaguely similar to Google's Tango augmented reality platform.

Qualcomm'south iris scanning module for Spectra should allow more than OEMs to compete with Samsung's iris scanning tech. Qualcomm contends that its version is better than Samsung's in both speed and accuracy. It'due south likewise able to tell the difference between a real center and an image of one for improved security.

The new camera features demoed by Qualcomm will almost certainly be restricted to the about expensive phones on the market. Not but will it require powerful hardware, just OEMs will as well have to license this technology from Qualcomm. Even so, that'll probably exist cheaper than developing similar in-house solutions. The commencement phones with support for these features won't be out until former next twelvemonth.

At present read: 25 Best Android Tips to Make Your Phone More than Useful