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This is what people thought when cameras were added to cell phones in 2001

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One of the great channels on YouTube is the BBC Archive. And while it covers a wide range of topics, particularly retro tech, it also looks back at old news broadcasts. This one’s particularly relevant here, as it details the introduction of cameras into cell phones (or “mobile phones”, as we call them here ) to the UK back in 2001.

It’s an interesting look back at what people thought back then. Some labelled it as a “gimmick”. Others talked about the cost of sending images over that of sending a regular text message. Remember, phones weren’t really on the Internet back then, so images went over the regular phone network. The feature also had a high barrier to entry, with camera-capable phones costing significantly more than those without.

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Hands on with the ShiftCam ProGrip

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Smartphone photography is on the rise, there’s no question, and we’ve had our eye on the ShiftCam ecosystem since their Kickstarter announcements. The ShiftCam ProGrip has gone beyond the Kickstarter phase and is now out there for purchase, along with other items in their line-up. There are other systems available to hold our smartphone and make it look and feel more like a camera, but ShiftCam seems  to be up there as one of the better systems. Here’s why:

As a travel photographer and educator, I am constantly shooting, and when I don’t have my ‘proper’ camera with me, I turn to my iPhone. It’s often said that the best camera is the one you have with you, and with the advances being made in phone camera tech, I  find myself using the images I make with my phone more and more often. To that end, I want to be able to treat my phone more like a ‘proper’ camera, and part of that experience involves the look and feel. Rather than feeling like I’m holding a phone, I often want to feel like I’m holding a camera. And beyond that, I want to be able to attach my phone to my tripod.

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Glass wants to make all smartphone lenses anamorphic – but probably not the way you think

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Glass, a new startup working on AI-enhanced imaging, wants to change how our smartphone cameras work to overcome the limitations of current smartphone cameras. They want to do it using larger, wider sensors and the same technology found anamorphic lenses in order to be able to do it. The problem, essentially, is that size matters. And smartphone cameras are running out of space to expand.

You can’t make the sensors larger without making the lenses larger (longer) and phones just aren’t that thick anymore. AI is great and has brought us a lot of advances in smartphone imaging technology over the last few years but that, too, only goes so far. Glass’ solution is to use the 100-year-old cinema technology to overcome some of those size limitations.

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OnePlus to remove 8 Pro’s controversial camera “x-ray” feature

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Users of OnePlus 8 Pro recently started to notice that the phone’s “color filter camera” can see through plastic and some fabrics. It caused some concerns because, in some instances, it can basically see through clothes. Because of that, OnePlus has now announced that they are temporarily disabling the feature.

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Spy camera comes to phones with the OnePlus8: its camera sees through plastic and clothes

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OnePlus-s latest flagship phone, OnePlus 8 Pro, was announced only a month ago, promising pretty stunning camera performance. But it seems to be even cooler than we thought. While there weren’t too many details about the phone’s “color filter camera,” it turns out that it has a sort of X-ray vision. It can see through some plastic objects, and even through clothes!

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This picture of Saturn was taken with a Samsung Galaxy S10

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The sky above us hides so much beauty we can’t see with the naked eye. But even a consumer telescope reveals a whole new perspective. Josh Rabener recently got one, and he managed to capture Saturn and its recognizable rings. What’s particularly interesting is that he did it with his smartphone.

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LIT xenon smartphone flash cancels Kickstarter campaign despite exceeded funds

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Last month, a promising Kickstarter campaign was launched to fund LIT Flash, a powerful xenon wireless flash for smartphone photography. It seemed like a good idea and the project quickly exceeded funds. However, after reevaluating the project – it was canceled and the campaign is now closed.

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LIT Flash is designed to simplify smartphone flash photography

If you’ve shot with a smartphone, you’ll know how terrible the built-in flash is. LIT has introduced a new xenon flash which brings the power of an external flash to your smartphone photos. It will be available for both Android and iPhone and it aims to make your photos “lit.”

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OPPO 48-megapixel smartphone camera module with “10x zoom” goes into full production

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OPPO has announced that they’ve gone into mass production on their new 10x zoom camera module for smartphones and will release a phone utilising it in the second quarter of 2019. It’s a three-camera system which OPPO says is “built to work in perfect harmony” and allows them to offer an equivalent focal length range of 16-160mm – hence, 10x zoom.

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Samsung’s new 1TB eUFS chip lets your phone shoot 960fps and store up to 43 hours of 4K video

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As phones increase in capability, so do their storage requirements. And as one of the world’s largest producers of smartphones and smartphone technology, Samsung has been working on bumping that up. Now they’ve announced that production has begun on the industry’s first 1 terabyte embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) 2.1 chip.

With microSD cards now hitting the 512GB mark, it’s no surprise that internal mobile storage needed to catch up quickly. Now it not only beats the capacity of the largest microSD cards, but Samsung says that it’s also capable of transfer speeds up to 1000MB/sec, significantly faster than any microSD card available today as well as many SSDs.

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