News tagged with "smartphones"

The Finnish smartphone manufacturer Nokia has made a $20 million investment in Pelican Imaging - known for its consumer imaging technology that features a grid of lenses to allow for post-capture focusing. This has spurred rumors about the technology possibly being applied in upcoming Nokia smartphone models. In theory, this could add similar functionality to that offered by Lytro in its innovative light field cameras. Click through to connect.dpreview.com for more details.

Adobe has announced a smartphone version of its Photoshop Touch app for both Android and iOS. The app was originally launched for 10-inch tablets and more recently a version for smaller tablets such as the iPad Mini and Google Nexus 7. It includes features familiar to Photoshop users such as layers, advanced selections tools, adjustments and filters, but in a much smaller format. Photoshop Touch for smartphones is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play for U.S. $4.99. Read more at connect.dpreview.com

Early tech blog reports suggest HTC's much-anticipated 'M7' smartphone could have a Foveon-like layered sensor. All the information appears to stem from a Pocket-lint report about the phone, expected to be revealed at press events to be held in New York City and London on February 19. The suggestion is that the M7 could have a multi-layer sensor, rather than a conventional 13MP chip with a Bayer filter pattern. Foveon itself once tried to develop a sensor for smartphones and other companies are working on similar concepts. However, we wonder if the story comes from a translation error of Sony's 'Stacked CMOS' technology - which is used in a 13MP Exmor RS sensor.

CES provided a chance for us to get our hands on two of the latest smartphones. Interestingly, Sony's Xperia Z, ZTE's Grand S and the Huawei Ascend D2 are all built around 5", 1920 x 1080 pixel screens and feature 13MP cameras. All run Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) and yet, despite the spec similarities, there are still differences - in the user experience as well as the processors used. We had the opportunity to use all these phones, to see how they behave - find out what we thought.

Over at Connect we're assembling a list of Holiday deals - with the first smartphone and accessory deals listed today. We'll be highlighting more interesting offers as they come to our attention. The period around the Thanksgiving holiday is particularly prominent for shopping in the USA, with the Friday afterwards (known as Black Friday) and the subsequent Monday (dubbed 'Cyber Monday') being a focus of in-store and internet deals respectively. A recent survey suggests that smartphone usage could see Thanksgiving itself become 'Mobile Thursday' as people shop from their 'phones.

Smartphone photography is taking increasingly seriously as a medium, but this isn't because the devices have reached a certain standard. In an interview from 2009, actor and photography Joel Grey discusses the work he's done using a 1.3MP phone camera. He discusses the snobbery surrounding cameraphones (including his own), and points our that 'pictures are pictures...the subject, light and framing is everything.'