Tagged with phone - Personal View Talks

Cheap quad core MTK 6589 based phones with fullhd screens

Vitaliy_Kiselev — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 13:39:27 +0000

MTK6589 based smart phone
Cortex A7 quad core, 1.2GHz
1G RAM
8G ROM,
Android 4.1 OS
5.8 inch IPS screen, 1280 x 720 pixels
2.0MP front camera
10MP back camera
external TF card extended to max 64G
3G, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, FM radio, Play Store

http://www.pandawill.com/cubot-a6589-smart-phone-mtk6589-quad-core-57-inch-hd-ips-screen-1g-ram-android-41-3g-gps-10mp-camera-p71139.html

How soon they will stop?

Vitaliy_Kiselev — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 13:01:47 +0000

HUAWEI Mate, phone with 6.1" screen :-) Samsung also have similar things.

May be next year trend will be promoting 7" tablets as smartphones? What do you think?

Panasonic Image App phoning home

karl — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 16:58:30 +0000

Today I test-installed the Panasonic image app for Android, closed the firewall for the device and had a look at the network traffic whether and if so whereto it "phones home".

Without being configured/instructed by the user to do anything on the network, the app (right after pressing the "cancel" button on the initial camera connect screen - didn't want to connect to the camera at this time) places HTTP POST requests with "lumixclub.picmate.jp". At least if that URL is unreachable, the app will also try to contact "panasonic.net" via HTTP.

Obviously, I won't let my firewall allow this unsolicited "phoning home". I'm not a member of any "Lumix club", I don't intend to become one, and I do not want to share any information about my camera or my images with anyone at Panasonic.

It's a plague how electronics manufacturers today abuse your InterNet connection as they like without asking for permission and without having any reason to do so.

EXCUSES, EXCUSES: What motorists busted on their mobile phones say

goanna — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:52:50 +0000

from The Herald Sun: Tougher penalties coming as phone-using drivers dial $44m fines

(to police..)

Woman on the Monash Freeway in peak hour said she had an urgent email to reply to.
Driver on the Mornington Peninsula said she was on the phone to a friend whose house burnt down the previous night.
"I've got a sick relative I need to speak to.''
"I'm not talking. I'm reading a message."
"I'm working and had to pick it up otherwise I miss the job."
"I'm just letting my family know I'm on my way home."
"Just listening to my voicemail."
"I was running late and had to get someone to pick up the kids."

Also, from the French comedy series. "Les inconnus":

Mais ce n'est pas un téléphone, c'est une calculatrice!

Samsung Galaxy S4

Vitaliy_Kiselev — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:24:31 +0000

Understanding Camera Optics & Smartphone Camera Trends

endotoxic — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 09:19:57 +0000

A Presentation by Brian Klug:

"Since we’re talking about a smartphone we must understand the imaging chain, and thus block diagram, and how the blocks work together. There’s a multiplicative effect on quality as we move through the system from left to right. Good execution on the optical system can easily be mitigated away by poor execution on the ISP for example. I put arrows going left to right from some blocks since there’s a closed loop between ISP and the rest of the system."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6777/understanding-camera-optics-smartphone-camera-trends

Is time to hack some camera phone !

dadix — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:28:29 +0000

Hi. In this days some mobile phones have really good sensor. I browse youtube and I found several clips to demonstrate these facts. I see there an application called lgCamera (the free version ) which output have from 20 000 to 50 000 kb/s bitrate ! With this bitrate maybe color grading is a pleasure. Maybe someone will make a test.

Windows 8 Phone

Vitaliy_Kiselev — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 02:28:14 +0000

Full recording from 29.10 - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/windowsphone/liveevent.aspx

4608x3456 p30 or 2160p60 videos will be shot by mobile phones in 2013

karl — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:28:59 +0000

OmniVision recently announced a sensor chip for mobile devices that supports video recoding at a resolution of 4608 x 3456 pixels at 30 fps or 3840 x 2160 pixels at 60 fps. (See also: http://www.ovt.com/products/sensor.php?id=116 ). According to press releases, they expect mobile phones making use of these capabilities for shooting videos to hit the shelves in 2013.

Certainly, this sensor is not large enough to make low-light or "shallow DOF" shooters happy, and mobile phones are not really expected to have decent lenses mounted. But the reason why I wanted to mention this product announcement here, anyway, is that I found 2012 to be a somewhat sad year regarding the video capabilities of new enthusiast cameras. It seems to me that companies like Canon, Minolta, Olympus, Sony etc. want us to actually believe that it is still rocket science to read out sensors quickly and do the post-processing required to record videos from that - while in reality, they just deprive their mid-range cameras of even 1080p60 modes to justify their "pro camcorder" pricings.

2012 was the year that mobile phones took the lead regarding maximum still image resolution (Nokia 808 - see http://www.technobuffalo.com/mobile-devices/phones/why-the-nokia-808-pureview-is-the-first-real-threat-to-the-digital-camera/ ), however reasonable that may be. 2013 will be the year that mobile phone shooters will smile at those dinosaur below-4k-video-camera owners - whatever shortcomings their recordings will have due to the mobile phone form factor restrictions.

Don't get me wrong, I will certainly not trade in my GH2 for a mobile phone. But I'm somewhat frustrated how easily the camera manufacturers give up their market share to mobile phone manufacturers all for the wrong reasons. A child that grew up owning a mobile phone that - at least on paper - has better specs than any non-bulky dedicated camera will be a lost cause for the camera industry.

Samsung Galaxy S3

Vitaliy_Kiselev — Fri, 04 May 2012 11:52:29 +0000

I want my m43 Panasonic Lumix Cell Phone

NickBen — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:24:03 +0000

http://gizmodo.com/5845043/the-panasonic-lumix-phone-101p-might-not-suck-at-being-a-camera-or-a-phone

Imagine Vitaliy Hack and Driftwood 176 GOP1 on m43 Lumix Cell Phone
with Android and pancake collapsible lenses!!!

Mobiles replacing compacts?

Vitaliy_Kiselev — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 08:02:48 +0000

Today I want to talk about interesting idea that is very popular among some people.
Thom Hogan ( http://www.bythom.com/ ), for example, is strong proponent.
Under first look it seems quite reasonable - you have small compact camera, you also have smartphone with build in camera.
Why do you need both? And as phones are much more popular, cameras will be improved and integrated into phones with simultaneous compacts market collapse.

My personal view is - it won't happen.
Reasons?
We have some problems with physics, as you need very small sensors and small lenses to keep phone form factor.
Contrary to this - most popular compacts today are ultra zooms. Even cheap cameras moved to 6x-8x zooms.
Almost all popular compacts now have optical stabilization. I not even started to talk about flash (that also require capacitor of certain size).
Other important factor - you need some method to keep smartphones prices at least at current level. And improve their sales.
As looking from USA it seems like smartphones by Apple are real future. Despite that their sales are extremely small in most world regions.
My understanding is that soon we'll see same turning point that happened with iPods. Third party manufacturers will improve enough that Apple will start to lose their market share in most markets. If profit margins start to fall (Google also realized this problem and hope to hold profits by closing Android) you couldn't integrate good quality camera modules. Just because people generally do not care about camera in their mobile phone, so manufacturer will be cutting it as one of the first targets.
Internals of phones and cameras are also quite different, both from hardware and software POV. Cameras are built on top of specialized LSI and OSs that are suitable for "turned on-few shorts-turned off". Phones are built on much less specialized cores (but their processors are also become more and more integrated) and they have different OS architecture and power saving approach.
Of course we'll see monsters integrating cameras and phones into one (we already have such models :-) ).
Will they be popular? No way.