We are at the most interesting of stages, as far as mobile computing is concerned. Mobile devices are magnifying their computation prowess at regular intervals every year.
And some of the most remarkable advancements are taking place on the smartphones front.
These advanced cellphones have come a long way in the span of a decade, and some of the flagship models now rival the feature set and hardware capabilities of midrange computers from a couple of years back. Fast processors, plenty of memory, full HD displays — you name it.
Hardware makers are now focusing on delivering enhanced imaging capabilities in future handsets.
Take Nokia for example, the Finnish smartphone vendor is ready to move beyond the simple inclusion of larger camera sensor. The megapixel war is almost over on smartphones.
In an interview with DNA, Nokia’s executive vice president for its smartphone business, Jo Harlow confirmed that his company was actually seeking to help users capture more data when taking a photo:
“If you look at where imaging is going, computational imaging is an area of exploration. Being able to capture even more data — data you cannot even see with the human eye that you can only see by actually going back to the picture and being able to do things with them.”
Long story short, the company is currently working on Lytro-like field photography for smartphones, which actually allows users to tweak photos after taking them by changing their focus or making other such modifications.
In other words, photos taken with future Nokia Lumia devices would include enough data that they could be modified even after they are shot.
Nokia has already taken the first steps towards integrating this computational photography to its Lumia smartphones by investing in Pelican Imaging. Qualcomm already offers hardware chipset solutions that pack support for this functionality, so they day when we get this on a Lumia smartphone is not far off.
