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Amber X is a privacy-focused in-home cloud storage for your photos you can access anywhere

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With all the goings-on at Google and people looking for alternate cloud storage options, sometimes it’s easier to just be your own cloud. I use Resilio Sync for this, but that does usually mean building up a dedicated PC. The Amber X wants to simplify that process with an inexpensive cloud-storage-in-a-box solution that lets you store your data and retrieve it anywhere.

Amber X is currently running on Indiegogo, where it’s long since passed its goal. It has a couple of days left to go, with pledges starting at $129. But we’ve got you a special link that’ll let you get your hands on one for just $119 – about the same cost you’d pay for a year of Google Photos or iCloud for the same storage, except there’s no subscription with this!

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Xiaomi shows off retractable smartphone lens with IS, increased sensitivity and sharpness

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It’s been a long time coming, and they’ve been common in compact cameras since the days of 35mm film, but it looks like retractable lenses might finally start popping up in our smartphones. During yesterday’s Xiaomi Developer Conference in Beijing, they showed off a new lens tech that could potentially help smartphone photography take a giant leap. And soon, too!

GSMArena reports that Xiaomi has said the tech is ready to go, right now for implementation in real products. They say that it can collect 300% more light than traditional lenses – which means we might finally start to see phone images higher than ISO50 with drastically reduced levels of noise.

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Auto white balance in phone cameras kills real color in wildfire photos

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Massive wildfires are currently raging in the US West Coast. The skies have been colored orange and red, but you might not be able to accurately capture it with your phone camera. Many people have noticed that auto white balance on phone cameras is severely affecting orange and red hues. This makes this whole tragedy look way less dramatic and alarming than it is.

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Here are gorgeous winning photos of 2020 iPhone Photography Awards

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They say 13 is an unlucky number, but the 2020 iPhone Photography Awards (IPPAWARDS) proves the theory wrong. The 13th annual competition winners have been announced, and they’re absolutely gorgeous. I always love seeing winners of this contest because they prove what I often say – gear doesn’t matter, it’s all about the photographer.

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Light bows out of the smartphone camera industry

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It’s been an interesting journey for Light, the company that brought us that crazy 16-lens camera five years ago. It garnered a lot of hype when it was first announced, and once word got out that the company had secured $30mil in funding and the Light L16 camera was going to see a big storage increase, a lot of people got excited. It wasn’t until 2017 that they actually started shipping, but the reception was somewhat cold.

In 2018, it seemed Light was teaming up with a company (which turned out to be Nokia) to make smartphones, and in 2019 they announced partnerships with both Xiaomi and Sony. Now, Light has announced they are “no longer operating in the smartphone industry”. Exactly what this means for Light’s future is unclear.

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Adobe Photoshop Camera brings Photoshop’s AI feature straight to your phone

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Adobe Photoshop Camera was launched as a preview way back in November last year. And now, it’s finally out. It packs a bunch of AI features using Adobe Sensei, the same technology that you’ll see in Photoshop CC. And unlike most Adobe products, this one is completely free to download and use.

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Samsung spending over $800 million to ramp up image sensor production

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Samsung is reportedly ramping up its image sensor production capabilities in a big way, although it’s doing it at the expense of RAM production – again. The process began in 2018 when Samsung converted its DRAM-producing Line 11 plant to make image sensors instead. At that time, they also announced their intention to convert Line 13 to do the same.

The conversion of Line 13 was expected towards the end of 2018, but it seems to have not happened yet. Business Korea reports that the plan is now going ahead, though, at a cost of 1 trillion Korean won (₩) or around US$815 million. Which, apparently, is actually cheaper than building a whole new factory.

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Six cheap DIY rigs to raise your smartphone shots to a ninja level

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Smartphone cameras are now advanced enough to give us many possibilities for shooting photos and videos. But with some tricks and DIY magic, you can make your work much, much better without spending lots of money. In this video, COOPH brings you a selection of their six best DIY rigs for smartphone photography and video. They’re affordable, easy to make, and they’ll help you add a new dimension to your smartphone shots.

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Huawei has patented a “liquid lens” camera module, possibly for the P50 series

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Liquid lens technology isn’t a new idea, but it hasn’t really taken off. We’ve seen a few gimmicky implementations over the years, but we’ve yet to really see anything implemented in a consumer device on a large scale. It looks, that Huawei might be looking to change that, though, as a new patent has recently been approved detailing a liquid lens smartphone camera module.

Gizmochina seems to think that it might debut on Huawei’s next series of P50 smartphones, but Samsung’s been working on similar technology since at least 2005 with a company that’s been exploring them for even longer, and it’s still not here. Huawei does tend to push things when it comes to the cameras in their smartphones.

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Sony’s new AI image sensors could become the future of cameras everywhere

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Sony recently announced a pair of new smartphone-sized IMX camera sensors. They’re the first two models of what Sony calls their “intelligent vision” sensors. Sony says that they’re the world’s first image sensors to be equipped with AI processing functionality built right into the sensor itself for the fastest possible processing speeds.

This first generation of sensors, which includes the IMX500 and IMX501 (both 12.3-megapixels), is destined more towards Sony’s commercial and industrial product clients, but their smartphone sensors will almost certainly evolve to incorporate this technology over the next few years.

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