Qualcomm says: Mobile phone photography will surpass SLR in less than 5 years

Nowadays, the photography functions of mobile phones are becoming more and more powerful, and they can meet the needs of slow motion, portrait, sports video, background blur, ultra-wide angle, high-power zoom, etc. Therefore, a topic that has been talked about for a long time has emerged: when will it catch up with or even surpass SLR?

When communicating with the media recently, Qualcomm Vice President Judd Heape expressed the view that AI (artificial intelligence) technology has greatly promoted the advancement of mobile phone photography. This combination has entered the third stage and is still 3 to 5 years away from the ultimate, holy grail-level fourth stage.

Outside observers believe that the fourth stage will be the moment when mobile phone photography surpasses SLR photography.

The four stages here are divided as follows: AI technology began to emerge in mobile photography around 2018, but it was only used to identify what was in the picture, such as people, animals, scenery, etc.; in the second stage, AI began to be used to optimize 3A, that is, auto focus, auto white balance and auto exposure. In the current third stage, AI can already partially understand the elements of the scene and try to meet the needs of the photographer.

The so-called fourth stage means that AI participates in the processing of the entire picture.

In fact, earlier this year, Sony executives also believed that within a few years, mobile phone imaging will surpass SLR cameras.

It is worth mentioning that the vice president of Qualcomm also mentioned that compared with the bulky and backward cameras of Canon and Nikon, the Snapdragon imaging unit on the mobile phone has a processing speed 10 times faster, which will allow more wonderful things to happen. Although he also admitted that it is probably not realistic to configure a CMOS larger than 1 inch on a mobile phone in the short term.