Saturday, June 11, 2011

Android and Me

Android and Me

Rewind, the perfect group shot; or, How your camera phone is about to get way more awesome.

Posted: 11 Jun 2011 05:08 PM PDT

Last week when we were in San Diego for Uplinq, one of the on-stage tech demos caught our eye. During the Snapdragon super session, Raj Talluri brought up the team from Scalado to show off their new camera technology, dubbed Rewind.

Rewind captures a burst of five full resolution photographs, allowing the user to pick and choose the best bits from each photo. The selected faces are immediately composited into a single photograph, ready for sharing. We went and found Scalado on the show floor for a repeat performance, check the video below:

As you see in the video, Rewind is intelligent enough to detect faces and allow the user, ahem, photographer, to select which faces should be used in the final shot. Scalado even said they are working on a new version with smile and blink detection that can even do the selecting for you, making the process of getting the perfect group shot an almost automatic experience.

The only downside is that at this time they are only looking to distribute the technology via OEMs, meaning you shouldn’t expect to see a Rewind app in the market any time soon. The burst photo capture is processor-intensive, ultimately limiting the end range of devices it can run on (and explaining why Scalado has paired with Qualcomm and is testing on that beast of a device).

What say you, the avid phone photographer? Is this something you’d want in your phone? If manufacturers started offering the feature, would that be a real draw to the device or just a “nice to have”? Personally I think it’s pretty awesome tech but I’m still waiting on the boost in cell camera optics to really make it worth it.

Photos from inside the Sprint and Motorola Photon 4G event

Posted: 11 Jun 2011 02:25 PM PDT

A day or so ago, Sprint announced the new Motorola Photon 4G during an exclusive press luncheon in New York. We got so excited about the phone announcement (and the adjacent announcement of the Motorola Triumph) that we forgot to post the actual photos from the event.

We had one of our new contributors, Ted Cadieux, actually attend the event and you can find the full collection of his photographic efforts below. If you’ve ever wanted to peek behind the curtain of a fancy tech press event, now’s your chance (seriously, look at this little cookie & milk shots!)

Gallery

DSC_2582 DSC_2590 DSC_2593 DSC_2605 DSC_2612 DSC_2614 DSC_2619 DSC_2622 DSC_2630 DSC_2635 DSC_2638 DSC_2639 DSC_2640 DSC_2654 DSC_2658 DSC_2659 DSC_2664 DSC_2665 DSC_2666_1 DSC_2667_1 DSC_2668 DSC_2669 DSC_2677 DSC_2679 DSC_2681 DSC_2685 DSC_2688 DSC_2689 DSC_2692 DSC_2694 DSC_2697 DSC_2698 DSC_2701 DSC_2702 DSC_2708 DSC_2713 DSC_2721 DSC_2725 DSC_2727 DSC_2731 DSC_2734 DSC_2737 DSC_2738 DSC_2739 DSC_2740 DSC_2744 DSC_2745 DSC_2746 DSC_2753 DSC_2754 DSC_2757 DSC_2758 DSC_2759 DSC_2761 DSC_2764 DSC_2774 DSC_2775 DSC_2780 DSC_2782

Now that we’ve had a couple days to digest the announcement (one of our own even wrote an EVO 3D vs Photon 4G comparison), what do you guys think? Anyone stoked about getting their hands on a Photon 4G?

Did AT&T’s Samsung Galaxy S II just appear on Facebook?

Posted: 11 Jun 2011 02:17 PM PDT

Samsung’s Galaxy S II has sold well over 1 million units in Korea, but fans in the US are still waiting to get their hands on this exciting superphone. We are still waiting on US carriers to announce their plans, but Samsung’s Singapore Facebook account just posted some pictures of what could be AT&T’s version.

The Galaxy S II was first revealed back in February at Mobile World Congress and many thought the phone might launch by now, but recent rumors place the US version hitting stores around late Q3.

The AT&T version looks pretty similar to the Samsung Infuse 4G, but Phil Nickinson from Android Central points out that the power button is slightly different. Some have also said that the Galaxy S II has a single button on the front, but all of the US versions have been slightly different from the international version.

In fact, we won’t know the exact specs of the US versions until the carriers announce them. So far we have seen the Galaxy S II in several different variations that were powered by an Exynos, OMAP4, and Tegra 2 processor. About the only hardware spec that is certain will be Samsung’s stellar Super AMOLED Plus display.

My current Android phone is the Samsung Nexus S, so I’m quite interested to see what changes are made when this beauty finally lands on our shores. If you are in the market for a new Android phone are you excited by any of the already announced, upcoming models or are you holding out for the Galaxy S II?
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