Videos: Here are all the camera tricks that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 805 will enable

BY Stefan Constantinescu

Published 6 Jan 2014

Qualcomm’s newest smartphone chip, the Snapdragon 805, hasn’t started shipping yet. When it does later this year, it promises to have a graphics processor onboard that’s 40% faster than what’s inside the Snapdragon 800. What exactly can one do with all that power? The company has published four videos to their YouTube channel that demonstrates a handful of the tricks you’ll soon be able to do on a 2014 flagship smartphone.

The first is called “OptiZoom”. You draw a square on an object in the frame, and if that object moves away, then the phone will zoom in for you automatically so you don’t lose track of that person and/or object. The demo that’s shown involves a water bottle on a table, whether or not this works if you’re filming a loved one walking down a busy street is another thing altogether.

Next up is Action Shot. If you’re too lazy to edit your video after you record it, then you can simply select an object in your frame and then draw a line on your screen. Once the object the phone is tracking crosses the line you’ve drawn, the phone stops recording.

“Chroma Flash” is just another form of high dynamic photo capture. Better known as HDR, when your camera takes several pictures at different exposure levels and then combines them into one “perfect” image, “Chrome Flash” does the exact same thing, except it also uses your camera’s flash. In other words, your phone will take a picture with flash turned on, then another with flash turned off, and then the resulting two images will be combined.

And finally there’s “Ultra Sound”. Admittedly it has nothing to do with the camera, but it’s pretty cool none the less. High frequency microphones record you using a “digital pen”. This lets you draw on a pad of paper and then have your drawing show up on your phone’s display. There are so many practical questions here that I’ll be amazed if this technology ever gets off the ground. Will you need a special pen? Special paper? What if you’re sitting next to someone else who also has an “Ultra Sound” enabled device? Will this work in a noisy room?

[Via: Engadget]