Smartphone manufacturers pay a lot of attention to mobile photography. Especially some brands are making efforts to improve the camera in mobile devices and are partnering with different companies. For example, Xiaomi is partnering with Leica.

As an effort of this partnership, smartphones are specially tested by both companies and not only that, they also add advanced effects for photos. Of course, you may ask whether every brand needs to partner with another company. Well, some companies may feel that they no longer need to partner and may soon decide to start their own image development company.

Device manufacturers create their own imaging companies

With advanced hardware, smartphones can deliver good photos, although not as good as photographic cameras. Many device manufacturers work on mobile photography and cameras are developing more and more every day.

Now the latest report from Digital Chat Station surprises everyone. Some smartphone manufacturers are reportedly preparing to stop making exclusive partnerships for imaging systems and will set up their own private companies. First of all, it is not known which brand will establish its own imaging company.

But we don’t think Xiaomi’s partnership with Leica will end immediately, so this could happen in the future for Xiaomi. It’s thought that Vivo or Oppo will set up their own special imaging company. Formerly, Huawei ended its partnership with Leica and created its own company called XMAGE. This company works to improve the photo and video quality of Huawei devices.

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Flagship smartphone cameras are reaching a saturation point whereby it is difficult to compare one photo that was either taken from the OnePlus 10 Pro or taken from the Xiaomi 12 Pro because objectively photos taken on both phones still look stunning with all the details captured and minimal noise. This same rhetoric can be applied to the iPhone 13 Pro, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, and the Oppo Find X5 Pro as well.

Therefore in 2022, smartphone manufacturers have moved on to offering more camera versatility and creativity options for their users, like Apple providing Photographic Styles on its iPhone 13 series, Google providing Astrophotography Mode on its Pixels, and Vivo providing ZEISS Style Portraits on their latest X series devices.

Xiaomi may be the next manufacturer looking to step up their camera creativity options as recently in China(via ITHome), the Beijing-based Xiaomi Software Corporation has been awarded the patent for its automatic “night sky star trails time-lapse photography” camera software technology.

Xiaomi’s patent details the camera software algorithm behind the star trails time-lapse photography mode. First, when the user enables the “Star Trails” mode on the camera application, the camera will automatically be focusing on the night sky, and determine the most suitable settings such as the ISO, white balance and white balance for the scene.

The camera then needs to stay in the same position throughout the timelapse to take photos of the starry night sky between each consecutive time interval of the stars’ movement in the night. The algorithm then stores these photos to interpret the data and colour science behind each one. Using the interpreted data, the algorithm then compiles all the photos together and processes the images into a short-form video that shows the time-lapse journey of the star trails being formed on the screen. 

Alternatively, users can also use the algorithm for other types of moving star trails videos such as infinitely looping star trails, or a photo output of the swirling star trails in the night sky.

Since the patent has been recently approved and gone public, we expect Xiaomi to soon feature this “Star Trails” mode in its next camera-focused flagship, which could be the Xiaomi 12 Ultra, which is rumoured to launch soon next month in China with a Leica branded camera, and with Qualcomm’s unannounced Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+.

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(Via)

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