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The Pixel 2's Dormant 'Visual Core' Chip Gets Activated In Latest Android Developer Preview (techcrunch.com)
The Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL both feature a custom Intel "Visual Core" co-processor, which is meant to improve speed and battery life when shooting photos with Google's HDR+ technology. The chip has been hanging out in the phone not really doing much of anything -- until now. TechCrunch reports of a new developer preview of Android 8.1 due out today that puts the chip to use. "The component is expected to further improve the handsets' cameras, which were already scoring good marks, production issues aside." From the report: According to the company, Pixel Visual Core has eight image processing unit (IPU) cores and 512 arithmetic logic units. Using machine learning, the company says it's able to speed things up by 5x, with one tenth of the energy. Access to the chip, combined with the Android Camera API means third-party photo apps will be able to take advantage of the system's speedy HDR+. Sounds swell, right? Of course, this is still just an early preview, only available to people who sign up for Google's Beta program. That means, among other things, dealing with potential bugs of an early build. Google wouldn't give us any more specific information with regards to when the feature will be unlocked for the public, but it's expected to arrive along with the 8.1 public beta in December.
I figure there's two types in Google right now, a group that can barely code a "hello world" app, and a group that knows their subject in real detail, and they're in balance making Google at the tipping point.
Look at the Android phones and tablets. Google's Pixel 2: The plastic section starts at the same place as the volume button making it mechanically weak. That passed both design and testing phases. Or tablets that turns portrait when running a portrait app, forcing you to pick up the device, keyboard and all, when the portrait app runs on many devices normally a lot smaller. Why wouldn't you simply give it a phone sized portrait window? Why treat these as non-resizable in Chrome when they really support lots of different sized phones so are clearly resizeable!...... again dumbos in there. Or material design man, the radio button and checkbox that are both circles and you only know its action by pressing it to see what happens.... dumb design.
And yet here is a group that has been working with machine learning and design a chip to speed up the processing of their phone cameras.
None of the Google devices sell in any volume, they'll never match even a few % of iPhoneX's sales because there are too many dumbos and not enough geniuses there.
It's like they're at a tipping point.
HDR+ in a cameraphone is like saying a 4K screen is better than a 720p one for playing 720p video.
No it's like saying a 4k screen is better than a 720p one for 4k video.
HDR+ increases the dynamic range of the sensor. The 3 most important metrics of an image are: Dynamic range\Noise (check), Color Rendition and Sharpness. Cameraphones are already plenty sharp, nearly all of the top camera phones shoot DNG uncompressed RAW and now they're implementing improved HDR modes to extended the dynamic range.
I own an 8k RED camera but almost all the photos I take are on my smartphone because the image is reasonably good. If I had one request for smartphone sensors it would be "more dynamic range" aka HDR+.
Garbage In, Garbage Out.
That applies to subject matter much much much more than sensor size. And given most of us carry smartphones all the time and full-frame cameras almost never, the content is better for cell phones.
By all means, carry a camera with you. You may be surprised to realize that google activating hdr enhancements in their phone doesn't affect your ability to do that. It probably won't even decrease the number of people who are impressed with how much better your photos are than the camera phone. Hard to go below zero after all.
Sure why not. There's no way this can go wrong right?
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
To what extent is this SOC comparable to Intel's management engine? Isn't Google basically putting a second computer in my computer? With all the risks that entails?
Camera phones tend to lack optical zoom, and digital zoom is largely pointless (basically cropping)...
For a fixed range they're not too bad, you'll need a pretty highend camera with some decent lenses to beat a modern smartphone.
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My wife fancies herself as an amateur professional photographer and I have to keep explaining the uselessness of digital zooming. Not only is it useless, it limits your editing afterwards. Unless you just need a quick "take the photo and never edit it" it's a waste of a good shot.
I got her a camera with an optical zoom which has made a good compromise for her desire to want an instantly done, ready to share picture that she can still edit later.
"HDR+ increases the dynamic range of the sensor."
No it doesn't. Dynamic range of the sensor is fixed.
"Cameraphones are already plenty sharp..."
Says who? Small sensors and cheap lenses are only "plenty sharp" to non-discriminating users.
"...early all of the top camera phones shoot DNG uncompressed RAW and now they're implementing improved HDR modes to extended the dynamic range"
Shooting RAW disables post-processing during acquisition, rendering your comments on HDR moot.
"I own an 8k RED camera..."
You may own one, and you may not, but owning one doesn't mean you know anything about photography. Your comments say otherwise.
digital zoom is largely pointless (basically cropping)
Digital zoom is actually quite useful, you should try it. You'll find the resulting photos, though fuzzy, are actually perfectly reasonable.
And if you're shooting video, a modern phone will give you 2x digital zoom with no loss in quality. i.e. My Samsung has a 4k sensor, so when shooting 2k video I can zoom in up to 2x with no loss of quality, and even a bit more with no objectionable loss in quality.
Digital zoom lets you capture your artistic intent right now, while the opportunity exists. It's certainly not the *best* picture you can get, but it's better than nothing. You'll find you're more often happy that you got the picture, than unhappy at the reduced quality.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.