Samsung launches its 108-megapixel smartphone camera sensor

The future of smartphone cameras features hundreds of megapixels. Samsung and Xiaomi partnered to develop the 108-megapixel ISOCELL Bright HMX sensor. It's one of the largest smartphone sensors ever at 1/1.33-inches. That is about three quarters the size of the 1-inch sensor on Sony's RX100 VII compact camera and just a bit smaller than the sensor on Nokia's legendary Pureview 808 phone. The sensor will still feature small pixels. By default and with Samsung's Tetracell tech, it will gather the light from four pixels and transform this into a 27-megapixel photo. If you want to take 108-megapixel photos, you'll need to make sure the room is brightly lit, so you can get decent shots. The sensor also allows for recording 6k video at 30fps.

With Samsung's Smart-ISO mechanism, it'll automatically select lower ISOs in brighter light and high ISO in dim areas. Samsung has been criticized in the past for inferior low-light performance when compared to its competitors like the Huawei P30 Pro and other models that use Sony chips. But by putting in a bigger sensor, the company might finally have an answer. Production of the chip will start later this month.

Source: Engadget

Xiaomi teases its take on the foldable smartphone

The race to release foldable smartphones is on. Xiaomi just teased its take on the technology through a teaser video uploaded on Weibo (the Chinese equivalent to Twitter). It shows Xiaomi’s co-founder and President Lin Bin tinkering around with a double-folding phone. It’s a unique interpretation of the trend, with the sides of the phone folding in and out to switch from a tablet to a more compact smartphone. We don’t have details beyond what’s in the video. The phone, which is an engineering mode, is said to have overcome “a series of technical problems such as flexible folding screen technology, four-wheel drive folding shaft technology, flexible cover technology, and MIUI adaptation.”

There are, of course, obvious weak points to the device. Having it fold on two ends means there are more moving parts that can be damaged. Availability is also an issue, beyond the market Xiaomi caters to. We’re also curious to see if the ends when folded to the back of the device are usable. Xiaomi is known to undercut its competition while offering good value for its devices, so we’re also curious how much this device will cost. Samsung is rumoured to be revealing its foldable phone next month, ahead of Mobile World Congress. Now, we want to see if Xiaomi will try and catch up and release any news at MWC about this phone.

Source: The Verge

Report claims Xiaomi is in interested in buying GoPro

GoPro has been scaling down its business due to financial issues. The company announced back in January that it was leaving the drone business because of this. GoPro’s CEO Nick Woodman has said in an interview with CNN before that he was open to selling the company. He said, “If there was an opportunity to merge GoPro with a larger parent company that could help us scale our business and provide a better return on investment… we would welcome the opportunity…”

Now there seems to be someone interested in buying GoPro. Bloomberg reports Chinese tech company Xiaomi is looking to purchase the action sports camera company. Xiaomi is known in Asia for its affordable, feature-packed phones but it has also delved into everything from robot vacuums, laptops, electric scooters, power banks, routers, and many more. Perhaps, it wants to boost its action camera segment or possibly get into drones. Not much is known about this potential deal at the moment but GoPro is being valued at around a billion dollars, according to the report from The Information.

OnePlus copies Xiaomi and pits OxygenOS against pure Android in Twitter poll, loses gracefully

Nothing beats pure Android experience, at least for a lot of users. Chinese company Xiaomi set to find out if its own MIUI 9 interface can beat out the pure Android One UI. Android One beat out MIUI 9 with the final result at 57% for Android One and the MIUI 9 getting 43%. While the results were expected, especially with Android fans wanting to get as close to stock Android as they can get, Xiaomi’s response was curious. The company deleted the poll three days after it put it up on February 7, perhaps out of shame for losing.

A couple of days after Xiaomi took down the poll, OnePlus seemed to have wanted to try the same thing out. The results were almost similar to Xiaomi’s with 58% leaning towards pure Android and 42% for OxygenOS. But OnePlus was a more gracious loser as evidenced by what happened after. The company’s CEO Carl Pei tweeted “Don’t delete this poll,” taking a jab perhaps at Xiaomi’s response to its results. The OnePlus employee who put up the poll even said they appreciated the response and that it “motivates” them to work on OxygenOS more.

Thanks for an overwhelming amount of responses. I've read all your comments. Appreciate the positive and, especially, negative ones. It motivates us for further work on OxygenOS and helps improving the product. Cheers!

— Szymon Kopeć 📱🇵🇱 (@szymonkopec) February 14, 2018

 

Source: Android Authority