Manual Camera Controls in iOS 8

For the longest time, iOS had almost no camera controls at all. There would be a toggle for HDR, a toggle to switch to the front-facing camera, and a toggle to switch to video recording mode. The only other tool that was accessible would be the AE/AF lock. This meant that you had to hope that the exposure and focus would be correct, because there was no direct method of adjusting these things. Anyone that paid attention to the WWDC 2014 keynote would’ve heard maybe a few sentences about manual camera controls. Despite the short mention in the keynote, this is a massive departure from the previously all-auto experience.

To be clear, iOS 8 will expose just about every manual camera control possible. This means that ISO, shutter speed, focus, white balance, and exposure bias can be manually set within a custom camera application. Outside of these manual controls, Apple has also added gray card functionality to bypass the auto white balance mechanism and both EV bracketing and shutter speed/ISO bracketing.

For those that are unfamiliar with such terms, it’s worth talking about what each of these controls can do. First, ISO and shutter speed are two of the three factors that affect the exposure of a scene. The third is the lens aperture, but in the context of mobile, aperture is almost always fixed. ISO is best described as the sensor gain, and shutter speed is the time that the sensor is taking in light. While increasing ISO can brighten a scene, doing so also increase the noise in an image. It’s also possible to select different formats within a custom camera application, such as the low light mode. This means that a third party camera application wouldn’t be denied access to features that can be found in the stock camera application. A possible UI for this third party camera can be seen below in the Lumia 1020’s Nokia Pro Camera application.

The flip side is shutter speed. While longer shutter speeds can decrease ISO, it also means that hand shake and motion blur are more likely to affect the image. This means that things like long exposure photography are now possible. It’s also possible to force lower or higher ISO/shutter speed compared to what the auto-exposure algorithm would pick based upon the scene. It’s also important to note that the preview frame rate will be the same as the set shutter speed. This means that the lower bound can be 1FPS in certain formats. With the controls that Apple has exposed, it’s even possible for developers to write their own custom auto-exposure algorithms. Outside of these manual controls, it’s also possible to add a bias to the auto-exposure algorithm. This should appear in the stock iOS 8 camera application in the near future.

Focus is another key control that adjusts the lens from macro focus to infinity focus, and this means that it’s now possible to focus in situations where contrast detection auto-focus mechanisms struggle to work correctly. This opens up new ways to compose an image, and also opens up new kinds of shots with video. A great example of this is smoothly focusing into an object to provide a dramatic effect, something that would’ve been impossible up until now. There was a strong emphasis on the fact that focus couldn’t be mapped to distance, as the focal length varies from device to device and the VCM behavior is also affected by gravity, age, and variance in the production process. A diagram of a VCM AF system can be seen below.

White balance is now also fully manual, something that was previously only limited to Windows Phone and HTC’s custom camera application. Apple went into deep detail regarding the implementation of this manual color balance, which effectively skews based upon RGB gain at a low level, but can be converted to Kelvin through the API that is opened up. This, in addition to the “gray world” white balance, allows further control of how a shot will come out.

While only the exposure bias controls will make it into the stock camera application, all of these new controls exposed through the AVCaptureDevice APIs will enable camera applications similar to Nokia’s Pro Camera or HTC’s Sense 6 camera application. It’s been said that Apple is one of the few OEMs that take camera seriously, and these new controls can only cement that position.

Micromax Moves Forward With Windows Phone For India

At MWC this year, Microsoft announced it was partnering with several new companies to bring additional Windows Phone devices to market. At BUILD, they announced an additional two companies – Micromax and Prestigio. Today, Microsoft used their Windows Phone Blog to announce some of the first of these new entrants with the Micromax Canvas Win W121 and Canvas Win W092.

Neither of these devices could be considered a flagship device in any market, but clearly that’s not the push right now. With the (relative) success of the Lumia 520, Nokia showed that low prices are still important in a lot of markets and can allow for some respectable volumes of devices to be sold.

There were two major changes earlier this year which have led to Windows Phone going from basically three OEMs (Nokia, Samsung, and HTC) to double digit numbers of OEMs pledged to bring devices out based on Microsoft’s smartphone platform. The first is the $0 licensing model for all Windows devices under 9” in screen size. This lets Windows Phone compete head on with Android – at least from a licensing perspective. In fact, with the patents being paid to Microsoft from basically all Android device makers, it’s possible that going with Windows Phone is actually less costly on the licensing end. The other major change was that Microsoft released a Qualcomm reference design for Windows Phone, and both of the Micromax devices are utilizing that to save costs on engineering. This is a big change, and allows OEMs to bring devices to market faster and for much less money than having to design an entire phone themselves.

The Win W121 is the more upscale device of the two, with a 5” IPS display with a 720×1280 resolution for a reasonable 294 pixels per inch. Driving the display is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 quad-core 1.2 GHz which is likely the 8212 (Cortex A7, Adreno 302) version found in other Micromax devices and comes equipped with 1 GB of RAM which is much better than the low end Nokia phones. The battery is a 2000 mAh, and there is an 8 MP rear camera with LED flash and a 2 MP front facing camera. The W121 has dual SIMs, and the 8 GB of internal storage is expandable storage via microSD up to another 32 GB. The back is faux leather and removable, much like the Samsung Note 3.

The Win W092 is a 4” IPS version, but lowers a lot of the specifications to reach a lower price point. The screen is 480×800 resolution, but keeps the same quad-core Snapdragon 200, 1 GB of RAM, and 8 GB of storage. Once again, the storage is expandable with microSD adding up to an additional 32 GB more space. The battery is correspondingly smaller at 1500 mAh, and the rear camera is downgraded to a 5 MP but keeps the flash. The front facing camera is downgraded to 0.3 MP, but at least it has one.

Neither of these devices are very exciting compared to the HTC Ones of the world, but they are going on sale in India in early July for Rs 9,500 ($158 USD) for the W121, and the lower spec W092 is only Rs 6,500 ($108 USD). For the price, they offer a lot of value and should compete well against the Lumia 520 and Moto E range devices.

Huawei Ascend Mate 2 Review: Incredible Battery Life & Value

The commoditization of the smartphone segment has been predicted for more than a while now. It’s almost obvious in a way though, especially when one looks at the progression of the PC industry. It was once effectively impossible to buy a good PC that cost less than a thousand dollars. Similarly, it was once effectively impossible to buy a good smartphone that cost less than 500 dollars. While Google, Motorola, and small Chinese OEMs have been bringing high-end specs to a price point around 350-450 dollars, the relative marketshare compared to OEMs like Samsung and Apple has been miniscule.

While there’s some level of choice for high-spec, high-value smartphones at the ~5″ display size segment, the same is far from true for phablets. The Galaxy Note line is generally considered to be the only phablet worth looking at, and there really isn’t such thing as a “midrange phablet”. The closest thing to a midrange phablet is the Galaxy Mega. The one experience I had with a Galaxy Mega 6.3 was anything but positive, especially when it was priced at around 400 dollars off contract or more. The value simply wasn’t there.

Huawei seems to have noticed this, and in response to this unfulfilled niche, they’ve introduced the Huawei Ascend Mate 2. In the US, this phone is renamed to the Ascend Mate2 4G to indicate the different SoC and LTE modem, but the experience is largely the same. Huawei hopes to use this launch as their way to break into the unlocked device market in the US, and also as a way to build brand recognition in the US. This is definitely a big problem for Huawei, especially because in the US they’ve effectively been relegated to ODM status. The only Huawei devices that I can name off the top of my head are the MyTouch phones sold by T-Mobile, and those aren’t advertised as Huawei phones at all.

So, the real question now is whether the Ascend Mate2 is any good. To find out, read on for the full review.