Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 Imaging Technologies
Can smartphone cameras outperform SLR? This matter is often used by smartphone manufacturers for propaganda, but also often refuted by digital camera players, arguing that smartphone photography is limited to the inherent physical structure, it is impossible to surpass the SLR, and even cannot be compared.
SLR players are right, due to space constraints, smartphone lens and sensor frame are not comparable to the SLR, but this does not mean that smartphone photography is subordinate to the SLR first class, on the contrary, now is the smartphone camera technology advances faster, it has been driven to another fast lane – the addition of computational photography so that smartphone photography can do, SLR can’t.
Many of us remember the controversy over the moon shot by smartphones, which was not an easy task for professional SLRs, but today’s smartphones can easily shoot the moon. There is credit for computing photography because the moon captured by the mobile phone is largely “calculated” by the internal system.
Computational photography is one of the most important directions in imaging technology today, especially for smartphones, as it reduces the reliance on the phone’s physical optics and instead relies on chips and algorithms to improve the picture, and Qualcomm’s recently announced Snapdragon 888 is already a leader in this area.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 brings performance, gaming, 5G, AI, camera enhancements.
Qualcomm just announced the Snapdragon 888 earlier this month, one of the few 5nm 5G platforms that integrates the most advanced Snapdragon X60 5G modem and RF system available, with support for 5G Sub-6GHz carrier aggregation and millimeter wave, to deliver the world’s fastest commercial 5G network speeds available today, with theoretical maximum downlink speeds of 7.5Gbps and uplink speeds of 3Gbps.
The Snapdragon 888 is upgraded with a new 8-core CPU and the world’s first Cortex-X1, ARM’s first super-core architecture, at 2.84 GHz. It also features three triple A78 performance cores, all clocked at 2.40GHz, each with 512KB L2 cache, and four A55 efficiency cores, all clocked at 1.80GHz, each with 128KB L2 cache.
On the GPU front, the Snapdragon 888 integrates the latest-generation Adreno 660 GPU, which is officially claimed to deliver a 35 percent improvement in graphics rendering performance and a 20 percent increase in energy efficiency.
On the AI front, the Qualcomm AI engine on the Snapdragon 888 is now in its sixth generation, delivering up to 26TOPS of computing power, or 26 trillion operations per second, and on the software development front, the faster and more open Qualcomm AI engine Direct.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 ISP
There is also a new ISP image processor upgrade to the Spectra 580 CV-ISP, which is the first triple ISP architecture with a processing power of 2.7 billion pixels per second, a 35 percent increase over the previous generation.
The Snapdragon 888 also supports computational HDR, AI photography, and more, all of which, along with in-depth customization partnerships with algorithm makers such as HongSoft, makes the Snapdragon 888 a complete hardware and software upgrade for photography.
First Triple ISP (Qualcomm Spectra 580 CV-ISP), 2.7 Billion Pixel Processing: Snapdragon 888 Delivers Powerful Computing in Photography.
With the Snapdragon 888, computational photography is already key, and it relies on ISP computing power, which is why Qualcomm pioneered a triple-ISP architecture on the Snapdragon 888 that is more complex and delivers higher performance than the previous dual-ISP architecture.
With the Snapdragon 888’s triple ISP support, the three-pronged approach can handle up to 2.7 billion pixels per second, a 35 percent increase over the Snapdragon 865’s 2 billion, and is better equipped to handle the significant increase in sensor pixels and image quality that will be required over the next year or two.
Secondly, triple-ISP also makes multi-camera no longer an option. With triple concurrent shooting support, the Snapdragon 888 can handle up to three simultaneous 28MP stills or three simultaneous 4K HDR videos, each of which can be smoothed and adjusted, while the Spectra 580 CV-ISP can run three simultaneous streams in the background, switching between shots. It does not affect each other and does not cause stuttering when it occurs.
Third, with up to 2.7 billion pixels per second of processing power, the Snapdragon 888 is also capable of capturing up to 120 frames in less than a second, each at 12 megapixels, so there’s no trade-off between image quality and speed.
Computational HDR blessing Snapdragon 888 Introduces Single-Frame Progressive HDR Image Sensor Support.
In addition to the most powerful triple-ISP available today, the Snapdragon 888 is also focused on improving the HDR camera experience, which we all know is critical to photo and video quality, but HDR computing needs to be performance-based as well, or it will only slow down the process of taking photos and videos, which is not worth the effort.
With the Snapdragon 888, Qualcomm has also introduced Computed HDR, a single-frame-by-line HDR image sensor that can output three separate long, medium and short exposure images that preserve detail in different parts of the scene, such as light or dark areas, with the potential to significantly improve HDR video quality.
Thanks to the single-frame-by-frame progressive HDR image sensor, the Snapdragon 888 can apply multiple exposure calculations to HDR in photography, combining multiple exposures from the image sensor, and thanks to triple parallel processing supported by the triple ISP, the triple-exposure images can be captured and composited in a single frame, resulting in a final output that retains sufficient detail in both light and dark areas. For video, the Snapdragon 888 supports 4K HDR, which enables users to capture a final image with a huge dynamic range and extremely fast imaging speeds without worrying about artifacts.
For video, video capture also benefits from computational HDR, and Snapdragon 888’s support for 4K HDR, powered by computational HDR, also allows users to capture video with greater dynamic range and more detail.
Besides, the Snapdragon 888 supports 10bit 4K HDR video, 4K 120FPS video capture and playback, 0.1-lumen low light photography, and is the first to bring 10-bit HDR photo capture in the HEIF image format, allowing photos to go beyond the previous 8-bit JPEG colors, all thanks to a new generation of ISPs.
AI Photography Is Everywhere Snapdragon 888 Enables AI-Powered 3A Photography: Focus, Exposure, White Balance in One Shot.
In the Snapdragon 888, it’s not just the Spectra 580 CV-ISP unit that’s involved in taking pictures; its powerful AI unit is also ubiquitous, with an integrated sixth-generation AI engine delivering 26TOPS (26 trillion operations per second), and AI photography is an integral part of computational photography.
For the Snapdragon 888, the AI unit is deeply involved in all aspects of photography and video recording. For the first time, Qualcomm is bringing the 10th generation of 3A photography to the Snapdragon 888, powered by AI, which automates focus, exposure, and white balance.
For the average person, focus, exposure, white balance, and other parameters that used to require years of stunning photography to get the hang of, the Snapdragon 888’s AI-powered photography allows framing, composition, focus, and dimming to be handled by the phone – all you have to do is choose the right background and angle, and you can take pictures for dummies.
Snapdragon 888 Imaging Technology Upgrades: No More DSLR, New Circuit Leaders for Mobile Phones.
Returning to our original topic, can a cell phone camera surpass an SLR? The correct answer is not on the current route, because of the structure of the phone and the camera, the technical progress is inherently different, but we can safely say that the phone camera in some ways can do what the SLR can not do, it is taking a different path, it is entirely possible to overtake the SLR.
With the Snapdragon 888, Qualcomm has upgraded every aspect of the 5nm 5G platform, with significant upgrades to imaging technology, pioneering a triple ISP architecture that boosts performance to 2.7 billion pixels per second, as well as new computational HDR technology and AI capabilities to improve the user’s photo and video experience.
