For years I remember reading on the homes of tech info that are Engadget & Gizmodo about Apple patents for camera technology. All manners of weird and wonderful (expect any less?) things that could be down with digital imaging.
This lead everyone down the same path – Apple will make a camera!
That never came. But the iPhone did. Now, post WWDC it makes a lot of sense that when you consider the iPhone 4 will be the most used camera (well most photos taken on and uploaded) on Flickr that what Apple have been doing is applying the patents in another device to bring the next generation of camera up on us.
The camera app on the iPhone has evolved with every software iteration and hardware bump. Auto focus (3G), video recording (3GS), HDR (4) – now iOS5 brings us manual button operation, locking AF/AE, photos sent to the iCloud in the Photostream and some basic (but all you really need) editing capabilities. Slap them in with the 8MP sensor Sony are supplying to Apple this year, you get the world’s best Point and Shoot camera.
Now all of this has clicked, i’m going to delve in to some of the older patents from apple to see if there’s something else that may turn up on the iPhone 4S that will be a feature that’s hardware locked to that device. I find anything, i’ll be sure to let you know!
Image Source, the great guys at Patently Apple