\tLIVE FROM MWC19 SHANGHAI: Executives from Xiaomi and imaging technology company Light shared their views on the camera capabilities of smartphones, and the different approaches taken by different vendors.<\/p>\n
Chris Barnett, SVP of IP licensing at Light (pictured, right), argued \u201cmore cameras is always better\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore cameras is always going to give more light, it\u2019s always going to be better pictures, it\u2019s physics \u2013 there\u2019s no way around that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Patrick Pan, director at Xiaomi (pictured, left) \u2013 which has a partnership with Light \u2013 noted that for vendors, other factors also come into consideration. This means that there will be variations between the configurations used, for example in number and type of lenses supported.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe different OEMs may have different choices. For example, their users are of different age, have different habits, and different expectations for prices. All of these need to be considered,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are still at the early stage of developing multi-camera devices.\u201d<\/p>\n
Xiaomi and Light have not released details of their work together yet.<\/p>\n
Different goals
\nNoting that Google has been slow to embrace multiple cameras in its Pixel range, Barnett noted the company\u2019s motivations and capabilities are not necessarily the same as for other smartphone makers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a trade-off among different phone makers about what kind of resources they spend their money on to make a better phone, to make a better camera. Obviously Google can spend a huge amount of money and have a huge team to build all these algorithms, which they can use across Google Photos and other properties, and that\u2019s one way to get great photos,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other way to do it, which is perhaps more accessible to OEMs, is to just add off-the-shelf components, and fuse the images of multiple cameras to get decent photos that way. So there\u2019s a trade-off between engineering investment and bill of materials and component investment, and there are different right answers for different phone makers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another key application for multi-camera imaging is in the automotive sector, where high-quality images are needed to enable autonomous and assisted driving applications.<\/p>\n
\u201cLight is working on multi-camera autonomous driving: we\u2019re doing that because of the ability of multiple cameras to give better depth. Some people say about the dark, and how you work in the dark, but if you think about it, when you are driving there is always enough light to see \u2013 from your headlights, from street lights, so the camera will always have light,\u201d Barnett said.<\/p>\n
But Pan also pointed to other technologies, such as Lidar, having a key role to play in this segment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LIVE FROM MWC19 SHANGHAI: Executives from Xiaomi and imaging technology company Light shared their views …<\/p>\n
The post Device execs zoom in on camera tech<\/a> appeared first on Mobile World Live<\/a>.<\/p>\n