Google works to catch up with Nokia to bring RAW photography to its smartphones.
Google is reportedly going to add RAW image support to its Android code in order to boost the camera capabilities on the Android smartphones. According to codes spotted by app developer Josh Brown, the new Android camera API will enable smartphones to save uncompressed photos alongside JPEG ones.
Besides shooting RAW images, Google is working to include support for burst shot and improved face detection features. There’s also mention of support for a removable camera. According to ARS Technica, the API had been in the works since December 2012, but was pulled last month as it wasn’t ‘ready’ for KitKat release.
Here’s descriptions of new functionality:
“Full-capability devices allow for per-frame control of capture hardware and post-processing parameters at high frame rates. They also provide output data at high resolution in uncompressed formats, in addition to compressed JPEG output.…
General RAW camera sensor image format, usually representing a single-channel Bayer-mosaic image. Each pixel color sample is stored with 16 bits of precision.
The layout of the color mosaic, the maximum and minimum encoding values of the RAW pixel data, the color space of the image, and all other needed information to interpret a RAW sensor image must be queried from the {@link android.hardware.photography.CameraDevice} which produced the image.”
With the launch of Nexus 5 and availability of Android 4.4 KitKat, the update is expected to be available early next year.
It’s notable Nokia has already launched RAW photography to its smartphones – Lumia 1020 and Lumia 1520. The feature allows users to store full-size images with zero compression.
Inclusion of new camera features is certainly going to be a huge boost to Android devices, which have evidently lagged behind Nokia and Apple’s phones on this front.
Source: Slashgear