As you already know, if you like microchips, Qualcomm has just presented the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. It is the company’s most powerful processor so far and it is the one that we will have in the TOP phones of 2022.
Xiaomi, with the Xiaomi 12, and Motorola, with the Edge X30, are fighting to be the first company with a mobile with this SoC, but while we wait to have a final device in hand, we are enjoying some demonstrations of the capabilities of this. chip.
In the presentation of the SoC we told you that the camera is going to be one of the great beneficiaries on mobile phones with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 because artificial intelligence will be more efficient and powerful thanks to the new NPU, but also thanks to the three ISPs.
And it is that, SD 8 Gen 1 incorporates three ISPs, the processor that is in charge of … well, of processing all the data of the shots to generate computational images with greater clarity, richer colors, less noise, and so on.
And in addition to improving the image, this computational capacity thanks to the hardware, allows different implementations of taking images via software. We have tested Qualcomm’s proposals on mobile phones with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 And then we will tell you what they are and what we have found.
Index of contents:
Video bokeh, the ‘cinematic mode’ of Android
As you have seen in the index, there are several demos we have attended and what we have been able to do first-hand to see how the result was.
The bad thing is that, as usually happens in this type of event, we have not been able to pass the photos and videos to upload a ‘direct feed’ with which we can check the quality of the shots in detail, but hey, at least we can tell you about the functions and technologies.
The first thing is that there were two phones: the one with its own camera module, developed by Qualcomm, and the ones with more normal cameras.
The first is only used for the demo of the panoramas that we will talk about later and the rest of the mobiles seem more ‘standard’ and the special functions come from both the hardware and the software.
In this first demo we have the famous bokeh for video, a function that some Android phones already have, such as the Reno 6 Pro -analysis-, but which has become popular thanks to the ‘cinematic mode’ of the iPhone 13 -analysis of the iPhone 13 Pro- .
Basically it is to apply a bokeh to the video so that the background and the person, and object, that is in plane is separated from said background.
We have seen that the resulting video is 30 fps, like the iPhone and the truth is that it seems to make a very precise cutout in the model that was helping us with the test, but you have to see how it works in more complex situations.
Here we had a model with a ponytail and hair collected (which facilitates the processing of the image), a lot of light and a fairly flat and remote background, but hey, the truth is that, at least what we saw on the mobile screen, seemed of quality with a precise crop and, above all, a very beautiful depth of field.
There is a button that allows us to see in real time the comparison between the unfocused mode and the standard (if you think about it, something quite impressive and that ‘pulls’ the power of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 GPU) and in that’ face to cara ‘the difference between unfocused and standard mode is obvious.
Panoramas without moving and without a wide angle lens, which has surprised me the most
But far from the bokeh in video, which is the function that will best impress among users because it is something very striking, lWhat has caught my attention the most is the possibility of taking panoramic pictures without moving and without having to do the typical ‘panning’.
It has a trick because here there is software, but also hardware in the part of the cameras. We have asked and it is not that it has an ultra wide angle and a standard angle and combines both captures, but that the camera module, developed by Qualcomm, has a prism in which there are two angular cameras and a mirror system.
This is able to cover a large amount of space and, as the cameras are not ultra wide angle, the deformation is practically non-existent.
This is something that has caught my attention because both in my shots and in those of colleagues in which we appeared on the sides of the image, the proportions are perfect, something that does not happen with a conventional panoramic or if we used a wide angle.
It is something that I liked and I see many possibilities for people who like photos, for example 21: 9 or similar, for those who want a video that seems taken with a movie camera or for those who are in the square of the Vatican (I do not know, it is the first example that has occurred to me) and wants to cover a lot of space without distortion.
Now, as I was saying, it has a trick because it is still an extremely specific camera system with that prism with the two lenses and the mirrors and I don’t know if we will see it on a commercial mobile.
The demo and the technology is there, but the application can be tricky.
Three cameras? Well, three simultaneous captures
Another of the functions that we have seen is that of taking several photos and videos simultaneously. This is something that we have seen, in a way, in the Samsung Galaxy S phones of these last generations with that ‘single shot’ function, but focused simply on photography and without waiting times.
On Samsung, you press the shutter button and it takes a few seconds to take a few photos, apply filters, and make some GIFs.
In what we have seen from Qualcomm it is to take three pictures at the same time and without processing time.
Basically our demo model had a wide angle, an angle and a telephoto and pressing the shutter saved all three shots on the reel at once.
This is fine for a hurry in which we are tight on time, we do not know very well which lens to use to take the photo and we simply take out the mobile, press the button and, ‘poof’, three images at a time to later choose the one to use. we like it more.
Sounds good, but there are little things to improve. For example, if we touch the screen to focus or change the exposure at a certain point in the image, it only applies to one of the lenses.
Ideally, by clicking on the box corresponding to each objective, the mobile would know how to differentiate between a touch to change parameters on the TV, in the angle or in the ultra wide angle.
What I liked is that there are no waiting times or processing and everything is done very, very fast thanks to the power of the SoC and to the processing of the images thanks to the fact that each sensor has its own ISP.
Silky waters not thanks to a long exposure, but to several overlapping photos
Another of the demos was that of silky waters, that effect that is achieved in waterfalls or in the sea that ‘portrays’ the water as if it were that, a fabric, while everything that is around is perfectly defined.
This effect is achieved with a long exposure photo with the camera, or the mobile, on a tripod so that static elements such as rocks remain defined while the water appears with that silky effect.
The way in which Qualcomm wants to change this so that we do not have to have the mobile on a tripod or take a very long exposure, where we ruin the photo if we move the least, is to create a single image from 15 photos that the device when we touch the shutter.
The impressive thing is the speed of image processingAs you can see, as soon as you finish taking the last photo you can touch the thumbnail of the image and the final image appears without having to load anything at all.
8K HDR video, it does not have much more mystery and is quite descriptive
There is not much of this role that I can count on.
There was a mobile to do the demonstration, but the phone screen does not show the colors that we are collecting with the camera, you do not appreciate that 8K resolution and, also, we cannot pass the video to see it later.
It is simply a demonstration of power to be able to capture 8K in HDR with all that this means at the level of image processing, but as we say, it is something that we will discuss in more detail when we have a mobile with this feature and can analyze it.
But hey, you know that that 8K HDR capture is there which, more than because of the very high resolution, what it will allow will be to reframe video after its capture. That’s the most interesting thing I find in 8K recording.
The big problem with all this is segmentation
Now, all this has a major problem that is also seen on other platforms such as the PC. When we talk about segmentation, we mean that companies often go at their own pace and with their own implementations.
The Snapdragon 7C Plus for laptops allows background blurring in a video call, for example, but the apps don’t use that feature, instead Meet, Teams, or Zoom apply their own background blur, so the hardware doesn’t take advantage of it.
And the same can happen with these software implementations. The hardware takes advantage of them, but what we have to wait to see is if the software and each company take advantage of those capabilities of the SoC.
We will see this over the next few months and the truth is that I am looking forward to seeing what they can do in this regard, and How many of these implementations do we see, in the first phones that arrive with Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, like the Xiaomi 12 or the Motorola Moto Edge X30.
Definitely, the tools are thereIt only remains to see how they use them.