Smartphone manufacturers make a lot of changes to devices each year both in software and hardware. Many of those updates sound great on paper, but are all of them appreciated by buyers? In a study by BlinkAI, the organization sought to find out what was actually important to a majority of consumers.
As a professional photographer, you can imagine my surprise when I found that my favorite iPhone (possibly ever) was not the one with the best camera. In fact, the phone I am talking about the rarely-mentioned iPhone 12 Mini.
The StarScope Monocular is advertised as both a hand-held scope and incredible zoom lens for smartphones accompanied by some rather unbelievable performance claims. Krazy Ken of YouTube Channel Computer Clan first looks at the ads and dissects the promises before putting the scope to the test himself.
MacRumors published a report earlier this week that stated a "periscope" lens system like those found in competitor Android-powered devices is still years away. While disappointing, Apple has still been busy, as the 2021 devices should still see a notable improvement.
A new set of renders posted to Voice indicate that Huawei, despite its recent struggles, is still innovating when it comes to phone and camera design. So much innovation, in fact, that the camera array on the coming P50 Pro looks very unusual.
Oppo announced its flagship Find X3 Pro smartphone earlier this week and focused the attention on its two 50-megapixel 10-bit cameras and billion color curved display. Those are great, but its 3-megapixel "microlens" camera might be the real star of the show.
Dispo, a popular photo app that mimics classic disposable cameras that recently raised $20 million in Series A funding, doesn't appear to know what it's doing with user data, repeatedly editing its policy in response to questions from Mashable, adding and removing lines about location tracking.
Oppo has released all the details of the Find X3 Pro smartphone it teased earlier this month, and it looks impressive. The new flagship smartphone features a quad-camera array with two 10-bit 50-megapixel cameras and a billion color QHD+ curved display.
If you’ve been looking at Samsung’s S21 or S21+ but wished a 108-megapixel camera was on the back just like the S21 Ultra, then Xiaomi has a phone that will interest you. The Xiaomi Mi 11 adds a Samsung ISOCELL 108MP camera to an S21+-sized phone and then tempts you further with an even lower price tag.
Twitter has announced that it is testing full-size images as previews in feeds for select iOS and Android users. This shift would make it so images aren't automatically cropped to a tight, landscape-oriented version on feeds and may make them more engaging.
Instagram Lite is a less data-intensive, smaller Android-only version of Facebook's popular application and is going live in 170 countries as part of the social media giant's push into emerging markets.
As much as folks seem to like to talk about desiring a smaller phone, it appears that actual buying habits argue otherwise. Apple is slashing its iPhone Mini production by 20% this year according to a report from Nikkei Asia.
OnePlus has announced that it has entered a three-year partnership with Hasselblad to "co-develop the next generation of smartphone camera systems" for OnePlus flagship devices. The first to benefit from this partnership, the OnePlus 9 Series, will launch on March 23.
Vecnos, the company spun off from Ricoh that focuses specifically on 360-degree products and technology, today announced a new feature called SphereFlow that it hopes will allow users to rediscover and rekindle their love for their 360-degree images.
Huawei is feeling the pinch of its trade bans with the United States as a new report estimates that the company's market share in mainland China fell to 16% in January, a steep decline from 41% in the first quarter of 2020.
Oppo has announced that it will soon launch the Find X3 Pro, the follow-up to its Find X2 Pro that it claims will be the first to offer a billion color display for a "true-to-life, evocative, rich visual experience."
Using physical glass elements for camera lenses has been at the core of imaging technology for centuries, but MIT engineers have now fabricated a new "metalens" that can focus on objects at multiple depths without changing its physical position or shape.
According to a report, Sony is set to release the first one-inch sensor specifically made for use in smartphones. The new sensor, called the Sony IMX700, would reportedly find itself in the upcoming Huawei Mate P50 series and the increased size would no doubt dramatically improve image quality.
Samsung prefers to keep its best camera features for its top flagships, and that’s why the Galaxy S21+ and Galaxy S21 have more in common with each other than the Galaxy S21 Ultra.
YouTuber David Dobrik's app Dispo mimics the experience of using a classic disposable camera and is generating considerable buzz recently despite being over a year old. Thanks to the success of an international test, Dispo reportedly acquired $20 million in Series A funding at a $200 million valuation.
Doom-and-gloom stories of the state of the camera market have been pretty common over the past year due to COVID-19. But what if the data used to determine the health of the industry was flawed?
Samsung has announced the next generation of its 50-megapixel sensor called ISOCELL GN2. It follows last year's GN1 and promises significant autofocus improvements thanks to a new phase-detection advancement the company calls "Dual Pixel Pro."
Huawei continues to push ahead along with Samsung in the folding devices space with the announcement of the Mate X2. With massive screen real-estate and a camera array branded with Leica, the phone appears to be on the cutting edge, if it wasn't for one major, glaring issue.
The Mobile Photography Awards has published its tenth annual selection of the best works of international photography captured on mobile devices. Founded in 2011, it is the longest-running international competition for photos shot and edited exclusively on smartphones and tablets.
Samsung is bringing several of the new capabilities that came with the Galaxy S21 Ultra and its One UI OS to its older phones, including the Galaxy S20, Note 20, Z Fold 2, and Z Flip devices. While not all the features in its latest One UI Android skin are coming, many camera features are.
Other World Computing (OWC) has announced that it has developed the only universal and fully-compatible Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C cable that is a certified solution for connecting Thunderbolt 4, Thunderbolt 3, USB-C, and USB-4 Macs, PCs, tablets, and phones.
The Galaxy S21 Ultra is Samsung’s bet for early 2021, boasting a new 108-megapixel main camera, and both 3x and 10x optical zoom cameras, along with many other top features.
OmniVision Technologies claims to have developed the first image sensor with 100% phase detection autofocus (PDAF) coverage designed for smartphones. The company says its new 50-megapixel sensor allows for improved distance calculation, faster autofocus, and better low-light performance.
The Xiaomi Mi 11 recently launched in Europe with the expectation that the Lite, Pro, and Ultra iterations of the phone would shortly follow. In a now-offline YouTube video, the Ultra was seemingly revealed and boasted a very unusual camera array.
Canon has announced the Photo Culling app, the company's new software for iOS that is built on a newly-announced proprietary artificial intelligence. Canon advertises its new app as a "digital photo assistant" to help select your best images based on four key parameters.
Samsung has published a video that details how its Smart-ISO Pro technology works. The company explains that unlike how traditional ISO functions, its tech can capture two ISO ranges at the same time in the same photo to dramatically expand the dynamic range and color accuracy.
In an attempt to bridge the gap between the power of computational photography that is backed by artificial intelligence and the physical benefits of larger sensors and optics, Alice Camera was born. The device promises to bring the benefits of both formats into one device.
Seasoned photography experts may understand why the 108-megapixel camera on the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra does not necessarily mean the best photos, but in this 5-minute video, Kevin Raposo quickly explains why it isn't better than a 24-megapixel standalone camera.
According to images shared by YouTuber Dave2D, OnePlus will soon be releasing a high-end flagship smartphone that features Hasselblad branding on the camera array. While many rumors like this end up being fake, this one actually appears legitimate.
Multiple companies are apparently trying to solve the selfie camera notch problem in various ways. Oppo has a design they could implement as early as this year that allows a single pop-up camera module to capture photos both forward and backward out of a single unit using mirrors.
Metalenz, a startup that has just emerged from "stealth mode" today, has revealed its vision for the future of smartphone lenses, a segment of the market that has not seen much change in the last ten plus years.
The Sony Alpha 1 may have many impressive specifications, but one that stands out as having greater implications for image-making is the sensor readout speed: it's so fast it may be able to achieve the computational photography we see in smartphones in a full-size camera.
Sony has announced the Xperia Pro 5G "communication device." Featuring HDMI connectivity and 5G, it is designed to work more as an external monitor and data transfer device, and less as a traditional smartphone.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman is a well-respected journalist who has a very strong record when it comes to rumors, and his latest promises the return of a port that photographers have been yearning to see: the SD card slot is coming back to the MacBook Pro.
Vivo has announced the X60 Pro Plus, its 2021 flagship smartphone that boasts a quad-camera array that was co-developed by Zeiss. Called the "Vivo Zeiss Joint Imaging System," the companies promise excellent quality despite the small size of the hardware.
Reports emerged recently that the iPhone 12's camera can't be repaired well by third-party repair shops -- even swapping it for a genuine Apple camera module causes functionality issues. Now it seems Apple may soon officially warn iPhone owners when their device has a non-genuine camera.
Late last week, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman published multiple Apple rumor stories that reveal some of the computing giant's biggest decisions for its coming hardware. While many Apple rumors are shots in the dark, Gurman has a pretty good history of getting things right.
Samsung has announced the Galaxy S21 Ultra as part of its Galaxy Unpacked event, and the phone looks like a marked improvement over the previous design. Specifically with the camera, the phone now features four cameras, including a new 108-megapixel "pro sensor."
Technology startup Numbers Protocol is aiming to stop the spread of misinformation in imagery through its app, Numbers Capture, by creating digital "birth certificates" for images and videos and tracking any changes that are made to them.
An artist who goes by the name adnan. has been combining simple images and graphics to create soothing minimalist imagery. What starts as an unassuming portrait or landscape photo can turn into a captivating piece of artwork.
Announced in 2018, we're finally starting to get a look at the $6,000 Zeiss ZX1. The camera is designed to be a photo capture, edit, and share device, and as such runs Lightroom Mobile right on the rear LCD.
Photographer Jocelyn Anderson captures beautiful images of birds in their natural habitats but also has a wonderfully calming ongoing YouTube series where she depicts different bird species eating out of the palm of her hand in slow motion.
Xiaomi today announced the Mi 11 smartphone which houses an impressive new low light technology. Quality nighttime photo-taking capability has been a thing for some time, but this latest device is the world's first to implement a Night Mode for video.
The holidays in New York City are my favorite part of the year. It's such a magical and festive time all throughout the City. You'll find holiday trees, light displays, and the prettiest decorations around every corner.
Earlier today, Apple officially released Apple ProRAW via iOS 14.3. This new hybrid image format claims to give you the best of both worlds: AI-powered computational photography on the one hand, and the flexibility of a 12-bit RAW file on the other. But does it deliver the goods? In a word: yes.
