Yufei.com, December 16th, Apple has made another move! From the acquisition of Intel’s mobile phone baseband business to the acquisition of a photography company, Apple seems to be on a “renaissance” road. According to foreign media reports, the photography company Apple acquired this time is a British photography company Spectral Edge.
Compared with Apple’s cautiousness in adding night scene mode to the iPhone 11, the photography company that Apple acquired this time is actually related to night scenes – because the company has developed a mathematical technology that improves photo images in real time. The algorithm was developed in 2014 by Developed by the Academic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, it enhances smartphone images in low-light lighting conditions.
If the news is true, then the iPhone’s night scene mode will become “real”. Therefore, today, let’s briefly talk about the “evolutionary history” of iPhone photography!
1. The iPhone 4 camera revolution
The iPhone 4 was once hailed as a generation of magic machines. In addition to opening the era of real smart phones, more importantly, it revolutionized mobile phone photography. When the iPhone 4 was launched, it was still in the peak era of feature phones. There were many mobile phones with excellent pictures. The traditional giants Nokia and Motorola had mobile phones with excellent pictures.
However, the iPhone 4 began to upgrade to 5 million pixels on the basis of the previous work, supplemented by advanced sensors and built-in LED flash. The hardware configuration and the enduring iOS system to this day revolutionized the mobile phone market. Until today, taking pictures has been a function that mobile phone manufacturers will inevitably break through. Social, daily and even all aspects of life are related to the clarity of mobile phone pictures.
2. 12 million pixels: kill the iPhone 4s of the card machine!
In fact, by the time of the iPhone 4s, there was very little room for the card machine to survive—because the iPhone 4s was equipped with an 8-megapixel back-illuminated camera with a 73% increase in light transmission rate and a maximum aperture of F2.4, It can shoot 3264 × 2448 pixel images. Combined with the enhancement of the camera function of iOS, the camera effect is comparable to that of a card camera.
But in my opinion, it was the iPhone 6s released in 2015 that really killed the card machine – because at this time its camera sensor increased the pixels of the mobile phone to 12 million pixels in one go; in fact, another change of the iPhone 6s It is to upgrade the front camera’s 1.2 million pixels to 5 million pixels, and supports panoramic photography, and the imaging system is fully improved!
At the same time, the 12-megapixel rear camera can not only capture clearer, sharper and more detailed photos, but also has multiple features such as 4K video recording, full video recording at up to 240fps, and night scene enhancement, making the iPhone 6s a better imaging system. Word of mouth, so it has become a generation of magic!
3. The era of dual cameras is here: iPhone 7 Plus
Although the dual-camera era of the Android camp has been years before the iPhone, the iPhone 7 Plus launched in 2016 is equipped with dual 12-megapixel cameras for the first time, which still makes many fruit fans excited!
Does it look good? The horizontal dual camera of the iPhone 7 Plus also opened a new era, and there are many imitators, but if you say good-looking, it is really not good-looking – after all, what about the iPhone X with vertical dual camera? The iPhone 7 Plus with dual 12-megapixel cameras will capture more natural bokeh, 25% more light, and better color! And the practice of dual 12 million main cameras has been borrowed from many classic models later, which shows the advanced imaging system of the iPhone 7 Plus.
4. Night scene mode added: iPhone 11
The new iPhone after the iPhone 7 Plus actually has nothing to say. It was not until the iPhone 11 series of mobile phones launched in 2019 that the imaging system of the iPhone mobile phone ushered in its own “highlight moment”.
Although the iPhone 11 this time still looks like a “dual 12 million camera” combination, it has actually been replaced with a combination of a 12 million ultra-wide-angle camera + 12 million-pixel wide-angle camera, and its ultra-wide-angle lens has a viewing angle of 120° It also supports 2x optical zoom, various K@60 frame video shooting support, slow motion support, HDR video shooting support, etc. In addition, it also supports short video shooting, and the most important thing is that the iPhone 11 has finally ushered in “Night mode” support.
Created in 2014 from academic research at the University of East Anglia, the “Spectral Edge” technology algorithm is capable of enhancing low-light images from smartphones, which could be important for future iPhone night modes and other photography features.
Specifically, the information is captured through an infrared lens and then blended with a standard photo, making the image sharper and improving color accuracy. Industry insiders also said that Apple may be able to use this technology to further improve the quality of photos on iPhones.
At present, the camera function plays a pivotal role in the smartphone market, and many mobile phone manufacturers are trying to improve the quality of photos and enrich the photography functions as much as possible. There are also speculations that Apple may add new camera functions to the iPhone. The three-camera system equipped in the iPhone 11 Pro this year is a new attempt, and there is a high probability that this acquisition is also related to this.
In public court filings, Apple attorney Peter Denwood has been appointed as a director of Spectral Edge, while other advisers and board members have been fired. Although the specific acquisition price of Spectral Edge cannot be confirmed, it is known that the startup announced that it had raised more than $5 million in financing last year, and Apple has not yet responded to this.
And this time, Apple has spent huge sums of money to acquire companies related to mobile phone photography – in fact, it is buying other people’s technology. What kind of shock will it bring to the industry? We will wait and see!
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