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What Apple want by buying LinX?
  • Apple has acquired LinX, an Israeli camera tech company whose most recent offerings include multi-aperture camera models which can enable effects like background focus blur, parallax images and 3D picture capture.

    http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/14/apple-buys-linx-a-camera-module-maker-promising-dslr-like-mobile-performance/#.5xk91r:sAx5

    Only thing that Apple want is obtaining algorithms for images matching and morphing. They do not want any of the modules or any hardware.
    It is also clear that smartphone cameras improvements came to the dead end (only RGBW lies ahead, but produce significant issues).
    Camera modules are very high margins products with very low actual cost, so for large manufacturers it is possible to put 4 or even 16 of them without too much sacrifices.

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  • Light: Startup believes it can fit a DSLR into your phone, at a price

    With Apple’s acquisition of array-camera startup Linx in the news this week, Palo Alto startup Light has quietly started leaking out information about its much-more-ambitious efforts in the same area. Claiming it can meld together the images from many small sensors on a mobile device into a single, high-resolution photo.

    http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/203620-light-startup-believes-it-can-fit-a-dslr-into-your-phone-at-a-price

  • Claiming it can meld together the images from many small sensors on a mobile device into a single, high-resolution photo.

    It is same thing.

    Just advanced math algorithms :-) Will be plenty pretty soon.

    Number of cores in mobile CPUs will stop at 8 or 10 (MTK will have 10 this year).

    So, next year main battle will move into array cameras. And we can end up with 16 and 32 in top models even. With sensitivity like m43 or even APS-C models, F2.0 fixed lenses with ability to select focus after shooting.

    Not good news for camera companies.

  • Interview with Light startup guys

    http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2015/04/27/light-interview-no-more-full-frame-dslrs-by-2025

    For me it sounds really weird, as the thing they talk about will be never implemented in phone (due to cost and complexity). Real future is cheap modules and software (with some hardware acceleration from CPUs).