Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Next-gen Smartphone cameras – What to expect!”.
Hey guys so early in the week i made this video about the snapdragon 888, which just got announced detailing what you can really expect from that processor from qualcomm. But i didn’t really go that in detail about the camera section of the snapdragon 88 and honestly, that’s kind of my forte. I really like camera stuff, so i kind of figured. I would make another video explaining kind of what you can expect from 2021 flagships and what the snapdragon 888 in particular, is going to bring to those smartphones. Okay, so, like i briefly mentioned in that video, the snapdragon 888 adds a third image signal processor, and the big deal about this is that one you can record from a third camera at the same time.
So if you want to record three angles with your three lenses at the same time, you could do that, but i think the most important part of having another image signal processor is that you can pipe all of that data into one single camera to unlock some Other really interesting features. Last year, qualcomm had two image signal: processors in the snapdragon 865 and that allowed for two gigapixels per second of data throughput, which was already a pretty big deal and the way that they were doing this was they were actually lowering the clock and then processing four Pixels at once, instead of the individual pixel processing that they were doing in pretty much every qualcomm chip before that this year, they’re still doing the four pixels process at the same time, but they’re actually upping the clock a little bit and because they have that extra Image signal processor, they’re able to hit 2.7 gigapixels or 2.7 billion pixels per second, instead of just that two gigapixels from last year. So the amount of data that you can take in through that sensor and then have processed by the smartphone processor is really important because it determines a lot of things about your smartphone’s camera like how long it takes between actually pressing the shutter button and having that Image appear in your gallery and it’s really important for things like resolution or taking higher quality video on your smartphone with 2.7 gigapixels per second being processed by the smartphone. That means that flagships are going to be able to do 4k.
120 fps 10 bit hdr video. You can take 120 12 megapixel photos in one second in burst mode, which is pretty insane. This will also allow you to take up to 84 megapixel images with zero shutter lag, and i know you’re. Probably thinking wait.
Weren’T we taking 108 megapixel images before the thing is those photos didn’t have zero shutter lag now? What i mean by that is that, when you are about to take a photo, your phone shows you an image on the display and showing you an image on. The display is almost the same as taking a video of that image. Now, if you have a 108 megapixel camera, you need over three gigapixels per second to actually show you the full resolution of that image and then store it in memory.
So what qualcomm was doing before was they were actually showing you 108 megapixel images at one quarter, resolution changing to 108 megapixel mode for one frame storing in the buffer and then switching back to quarter resolution. Now they can show you the full 84 megapixel image in real time, store it in the buffer as soon as you hit the shutter button and nothing actually gets reduced. Now, last year, on the snapdragon 865, with the two gigapixels per second of processing, you’re able to do 64 megapixel images, so the jump from 64 to 84 is actually pretty substantial and considering you only need a little over 3.2 gigapixels per second to actually achieve that.
Full 108 megapixel images with zero shutter lag. I think that we could probably see that next year or the year after all right, so something else that that data throughput allows for is something called computational hdr video – and this is pretty different from the hdr video that you’re probably used to hearing about like hdr 10 or dolby vision, hdr, which really defines a color space and then a brightness space so that you can actually see detail and the highlights and the shadows. Computational hdr uses, what’s called a staggered sensor which basically, when you’re taking one frame, takes two frames and then puts them together to make one frame, so you have one longer exposure and then one shorter exposure. The longer exposure exposes for the shadows, the shorter exposure exposures for the highlights, but they’re so fast in general, that you’re able to really mash them together into one single frame and retain a lot of detail. Now apple has had this since the iphone 10s and it called it extended hdr, but bringing this to qualcomm processors means that you’re going to see better video in general in android smartphones, so hopefully android smartphones will be able to catch up a little bit with what Apple is doing there now something else that chip improves is something that qualcomm calls the three a’s and that’s auto white balance. Auto exposure and auto focus in the case of autofocus qualcomm actually got a bunch of people together, put vr headsets on them and they used eye tracking technology to see where they were looking when they were looking at a photo.
Because, honestly, the foreground is not always the subject of the image. Sometimes you could have a rock and there’s a bunny or something behind the rock and you’re gon na want to focus on the bunny, because that’s a little bit more interesting than a rock. So now smartphones should have a lot better autofocus capabilities and because of that, better autofocus and the fact that there are three image signal. Processors, it’s gon na, be a lot easier for qualcomm to smooth zoom between a wide a standard and a telephoto lens.
Before with just two image signal processors, i kind of had to guess which lens you were going to use next, so sometimes it wasn’t a smooth transition between one lens and the other would actually black out and then show the other lens. This time it should be smooth between all three lenses. Assuming you have three lenses on your smartphone and qualcomm showed off features where the phone would actually automatically zoom in on a subject while it was tracking it which could be really useful for some auto video features. So that’s what qualcomm is specifically enabling in the snapdragon 888, but more in general.
I think that we’ll probably see bigger smartphone sensors, which will allow for more light and more dslr, like images we’ll probably see more 5x and 10x optical telephoto lenses, i’m sure 5x will probably become the norm and maybe even slip into the mid-range devices and then 10x Will be a little bit more fringe, but get a little bit more popular, most likely and then hdr video, both hdr10 dolby vision, hdr and then also this computational hdr video will all probably get pretty democratized. So video across the board is most likely going to get a lot better in smartphones. Also the snapdragon 888 and the 865 do technically have support for up to 200 megapixel images, even though it’s not zero shutter lag. So i anticipate that one smartphone manufacturer is probably going to try to make a 200 megapixel sensor for a smartphone in 2021.
It’S probably gon na look awful because the pixel size is going to be so freaking small, but it’ll likely happen. Anyways guys that’ll about wrap it up. Is there any camera feature that you’re particularly excited for in the snapdragon 88 or in 2021 in general? Let us know in the comment section down below make sure you stay tuned to android authority, because we got a lot more coming at you as the year comes to an end and i’ll catch you in the next article .