Qualcomm’s latest and greatest, the Snapdragon 855, has already got fans excited with its powerful AI capabilities, and of course the power efficiency from the 7nm process. But Qualcomm spent a good deal of its presentation last night, talking about the camera capabilities that the chip can unlock.
The Snapdragon 855 is the first mobile SoC to have a computer vision image signal processor (CV-ISP), which not only supposedly improves quality of still images, but also brings more video-centric features.
The Spectra 380 is made up of dual 14-bit CV-ISPs and supports up to 22MP @30 fps concurrent dual cameras and 48MP @ 30 fps single camera. Hardware computer vision functions include object detection & tracking in videos, and stereo depth processing for more realistic bokeh.
Video Portrait Mode
Spectra 380 brings object classification and segmentation for more feature-packed portrait modes. You can expect phones with this chipset to let you “separate elements of the scene and even swap out backgrounds and objects in real-time.” This means you could see phones with video portrait modes and also after-the-fact bokeh editing for more granular control of portrait mode stills.
4K HDR Recording
It also supposedly brings 4X power savings in image processing, reducing the load on the CPU and memory. Video shooting will also consume less battery by up to 30 percent. Qualcomm claims. At the same time it adds new capabilities not seen before.
Qualcomm also boasts about the second-generation HDR capture, the first commercial 4K HDR to enable the HDR10+ format and 10-bit color depth.
Just like Apple has done in iPhones and iPads, the Snapdragon 855 will feature HEIF hardware, which uses the HEIF file format. Two advantages of HEIF over other formats is that it stores files at half the file size, and it can also store the computer vision data, so you can edit the effects after taking the photos too.
Snapdragon 855 Smartphones
The Samsung Galaxy S10 will most definitely have a Snapdragon 855 variant to be sold in North America and other regions, and we also expect Asus to continue its partnership with Qualcomm for the ZenFone 5Z follow-up, which should arrive early next year.
