Shed Some Light: Smartphone Cameras Features

Okay, today I'm going to shed some light on smartphone camera tech and I'll be getting help from Nokia to provide me with some visual aid, so watch this video first and it'll help with the explaining later on =)

2 minutes should be too long, so please watch it, I'm not working for Nokia, if that's what you're thinking but they advertise their camera tech a lot and they just so happened to release this video~ It will seriously help later on, trust me. =)

If you're done watching the video, keep it open so you can easily refer to it should you need to, and I'll try to explain as much as I know about each feature they show you!

Starting with.... THE FLASH

Just to satiate those who thought of this when I mentioned flash (you're welcome =D)

Okay, I'm sure if you are one to compare specs or the company just likes promoting their product, you've probably heard of Xenon flash, and LED flash and also with the new iPhone out, Dual LED?

That's exactly what they showed you at the start of the video when the flash went off before capturing the picture. At just around 0.03 secs to be exact.

The phone in the video is equipped with a Xenon Flash, whilst other phone manufacturers would usually opt for the LED flash. Just to give you a heads up, Xenon Flash is better, but why? Let's get to it~

LED Flash speaks for itself, it's an LED (Light Emitting Diode) that's supposed to provide some sort of lighting when light is absent. The thing is, LED's don't emit light that travel very far. A Xenon flash is capable of emitting light 3 times farther than the regular LED. And that's just one of its upsides, the light emitted is also stronger so it can illuminate the object better and the fact it travels farther means you get more even lighting to a picture than something the LED flash would cook up.This also means more noise can be reduced and this all translates to a better photo overall.

Here's some photos to demonstrate the difference:

LED Flash

Xenon Flash

photos are taken from black phoebe, check it out here

Now dual LED flash is something different. Dual LED flash fires off a flash and then another following the previous flash. This translates to better lighting overall but at a cost of colour. The flash can often wash out the colours because of the immense light it releases. And it doesn't really help with providing even lighting because it is still LEDs so the light doesn't really travel farther.

Apple has introduced a Dual LED flash but this time, they've put two different LEDs, one white and one amber to prevent the washed out colours I've talked about before, does it really do well? Well, honestly I still don't know yet so we'll see.

Now don't go smashing every camera that doesn't provide a Xenon flash just yet, first of all, manufacturers don't opt for it because its more expensive, takes up more space (the phone would have to be thicker) and also it uses more battery power. There are also other ways to help a camera perform in low-light conditions.

Shutter and Aperture

MOVING ON! After the flash goes off and the light bounces off and moves towards the phone, you see, the rays entering the camera, right? When it is about to enter the lens, you see it opening, that's the shutter. The shutter limits the amount of light that enters the lens to generate the image. So often when you want to capture low light photos, the camera often prolongs how long the shutter remains open so more light can enter.

Another part worth noting is how big the hole or the more fancy term, "aperture" is, the bigger the aperture, the more light can be captured without affecting how long the shutter remains open. This also allows for the pictures generated to have a greater depth of field. A good example would be, the new iPhone 5S, which has a greater aperture than the previous iPhones. So, to cut it short, the smaller the aperture value, the more light can be captured and your pictures will have a greater depth of field. The iPhone 5 has an aperture value of f/2.4 whereas the new one has the aperture value of f/2.2. See, the smaller the number, the bigger the size of the aperture. Like I said, there are other ways to get good photos in low light and it involves these elements, hardware and software, working together, harmoniously, courtesy of Jony Ive (hatechu)

Image Stabilization

Following the video, after that, the light travels through a series of lens and then there's like a bearing moving around, right? Well, that bearing right there, is used to stabilize the lens because when it comes to taking photos, our hands are our worse enemy. They shake and move around and make it hard for you to produce a better picture. Ever so often when taking photos, they shutter speed is fast enough that your hand moving will not effect the quality of the picture taken. Much like how when they want to freeze a fast moving object in a picture, they use a very high shutter speed to capture the image, in the camera's point of view, at the point of time when the picture is taken, your hand is as though it was frozen in place.

But I did mention that when in low-light or when its dark, the shutter has to remain open longer to get more light. But doing this opens the picture to shake and to cut things short, the image turns out blurry. To counter this, you can use a tripod but carrying a tripod everywhere isn't the easiest of tasks to carry. Well, manufacturers have introduced Image Stabilization. The two common ones are DIS (Digital Image Stabilization) and OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) which is also sometimes known as Mechanical Image Stabilization.

DIS is done completely through programming, hence the name. By reducing the actual Field of View captured by the camera, they reduce the shake affecting the camera. Other methods also include increasing the sensitivity of the sensor (we'll get to that later) at the time when the shutter is closed and etcetra. However, this is not the best of image stabilization technology and sometimes can be buggy. Some also don't like the fact is reduces the camera's field of view.

This is where OIS comes in. Optical Image Stabilization is where the lens is physically mounted on a motor that will move the lens in the opposite direction the camera shakes to, leading to a better image. And because it does this much more effectively than DIS, having OIS in a camera also means better low-light performance. DIS is usually used because its cheap and OIS often makes the camera more bulky.

Sensor

Letting the video move once more, you'll see the light passing through a series of lens and then the light hits like a panel that has tiny squares on it, igniting each square the rays hit right? Well, what you're looking at there is the camera sensor. Notable keywords you should have in mind are CMOS, BSI, BI, and if you like more fancy names, Exmor R, Exmor RS. Those are all camera sensors. The typical camera sensor would be a CMOS Sensor, simply because its smaller and that right there has led to cameras being mounted on smartphones. So almost all smartphones use CMOS Sensors. Now how about BSI? Well, first of all, BSI and BI are the same thing, they stand for Backside Illuminated and Back Illuminated respectively. Are they different than CMOS sensors? They are CMOS sensors, to begin with, its just that BSI Sensors have their circuitry moved around a bit. To actually show why this is relevant, I'll have to explain how CMOS sensors work. (Don't worry, I'll make it short as possible)

CMOS Sensors have three layers, the first layer is are filters, Red, Blue and Green, the next layer is metal wiring and the last layer is the photodiode where light is converted into data to produce the picture. Here's the diagram.

photo is courtesy from Sony Global

The orange lines represent the light rays, and if you look carefully, you'll see that the metal wiring reflects some of the light back through the filter making it less efficient. That's where BSI comes in, one that Sony calls the Exmor R Sensor.

Sony shifted the photodiode layer with the metal wiring, but to doing so, see the green line indicating the front side of the substrate, yes, doing so, also point the front side downwards, so now the photodiode is illuminated from the back, hence the term Backside Illuminated. This is done so that the light won't reflect off the metal wiring thus making the sensor more efficient at capturing light. With the conventional CMOS sensor, the light capturing rate would be between 30-80% but with the BSI sensor, the capture rate would be 100%.

But what does this all mean for picture quality? The cameras would be better at low-light photography, which is why in Sony's Advertisements, they would say "great pictures in any light". Also, it would better picture quality in terms of noise and color reproduction as well as depth of field and contrast. Most high end devices come with BSI sensors so now you know what that implies.

Also courtesy of Sony, this can all be found on their Sony Global Page

Exmor RS, is simply the Exmor R that has been reduced in size so that the sensor wouldn't take as much space.

Okay, that's all I would be able to explain with my understanding based on that video, the rest of the video simply explains how all that light is shown on the phone's screen.

Hopefully, now you'll be able to understand more when manufacturers market their smartphone camera technology =)

Mario Kart 7 Review

My brother had just bought himself a Nintendo 3DS XL so I thought I would take the opportunity to write about my impressions for the game being a Nintendo fan myself, and I must say, Mario Kart is one of those franchises Nintendo have got right and thankfully, on a whole, this one is still on the right track. Also you can check out my brother's blog right here,  http://faridasalways.blogspot.com/

Here's the trailer, it's really cool, if I say so myself

And there's some box art for but now let's get down to the review.

First of all, it delivers most of what people would want with a new Mario Kart game, as a Mario Kart game. Gameplay is just as you would want it to be, so there is really nothing much I can say about it. But Nintendo has introduced some new features to this game, some of this includes new underwater tracks you can access and air tracks. Some of these features are shown in the trailer if you check it out  yourself. The problem here is, it seems more like a gimmick than something that Nintendo could have used to bring the player into their world more and show them more of what world can offer, sure the game is supposed to be a racing game but I'd like to highlight the last track in the Rainbow Cup, Rainbow Road. This track utilizes the underwater scenes and the air tracks very well and I'm surprised only this track managed to get this luxury.

The way you move through the track simply gave you a breathtaking experience especially when you take flight and land on Saturn's rings and then enter the underwater part where you were on an asteroid and the gravity would be low and on the race to the last track you would fly and try to navigate through each star ring to remain in the air. This added a whole new dynamic to this track I didn't really see in any other track they had in the game. 

When comparing Mario Kart to the New Super Mario Bros DS, super mario bros had underwater specific levels where the player would be just swimming and that entire level was JUST underwater. AND it looked nice as well, the fishes both made the track unique and more believable but at the same time posed as both an obstacle and a object that would keep you from your goal. But when you look at the underwater scenes in Mario Kart 7, they seemed to be just shortcuts or sections of the track you could go through but the entire track remained mainly on land (And I am specifying the new tracks they've added to the game and not the ones from other consoles).

The same can be said about when you take to the skies, it seems to be just a part of the track but is not highlighted as something more like for example make a whole track where you are just simply in air and I would have liked to see the same for the underwater tracks. Nintendo's approach to this made these features seemed more like gimmicks and nothing more. =(

They have changed a few mechanics like you don't turbo drift anymore but rapidly tapping left and right but how much have you drifted throughout the turn or bend, when you take a sharper curve, the sparks appear faster. This change doesn't really bother me nor does it make the game anymore exciting. Speaking of which, there is one mechanic I simply applaud Nintendo for introducing. The turbo jumps, whenever you make a jump, by pressing hop at just the right moment, your character will perform some sort of stunt and then you gain a short boost when you land much like when you perform a turbo drift. This just adds to the pleasure you would have when playing the game yet at the same time give you a way to gain an advantage when racing.

Other things I didn't like were that some of the menus when browsing through the kart and character selection were flat and uninteresting. Another thing was the fact you had to select the character to know its stats, this led to me repeatedly selecting and unselecting a character just to know the right one. They've even simplified the game only giving you the option of Grand Prix, Time Racing, Balloon Battle and Coin Runners. There's also online multiplayer but I'm missing the missions you had in Mario Kart DS. It feels as though this Mario Kart had less features than its predecessor when it should have been more of an upgrade. This also made the game fairly easy to finish and you would be easily left looking for other games to play.

In conclusion, Nintendo had gotten a lot of things right and a lot of the things I liked in that game still remained but there was a lot of room for improvement and there were a lot of things that Nintendo had overlooked that would have made this game much MUCH BETTER. I would still recommend this game as something you would buy to play with friends, but as something for a more single player experience, it definitely falls short. That is all~

iPhone 5C alternatives

As you know, the iPhone 5C, Apple's cheaper alternative to the iPhone 5S was released alongside the iPhone 5S and with its current price range, I wouldn't call it exactly cheaper. Contrary to what the "C" is supposed to stand for, RM1600 is definitely not cheap to begin with, then after that I realised "colour" was more appropriate and is what Apple actually intended it to mean. (Well, it was cheaper so you just assume, you know?) That aside, even though Apple phones are good, to begin with, one can't help but feel, sometimes (all the time), Apple is just cheating you out of your money... If you are willing to enter the Apple ecosystem or just eager to enter it, I have nothing more to say and just buy your iPhone, be happy with it and live on. But if you're like me, comparing and questioning, looking for the best value for money, what other alternatives do I have?

That's what I'm trying (I seriously will try, I promise) to do as much as I can for you right now, lets go along.

First, I have to know your needs, if you want to stay Apple, I'm sorry to say (and obviously though) that the cheapest you can get will be the iPhone 5C, unless you want to opt for older versions but if you want anything "this year", that's your only choice, so to speak and stop reading because there are no better options than these throughout this entire post =)

But wait, there's this Android, would you like to hear about it?

Since we're only talking about this year, I'll just give you choices for this year's releases, adding last year would make this list even longer and ain't nobody got time fo dat!

I just had to put that there

First I'll give you the lead contenders from the smartphone world, namely Samsung, Sony and HTC.

Samsung's would be the decisive Samsung S4 Mini and trust me when I say, the only thing you'll hate about this phone is its design, even the price will make you smile =)

This phone either tops everything the iPhone offers (yes both the 5C and 5S) or gives you the same coming at you with a Dual-core 1.7 GHz processor (I'll mention the iPhone's specs in these brackets, dual-core 1.3GHz), 8GB of internal storage with 1.5 GB of RAM, Micro SD upgradable (16/32GB, 1GB RAM, non expandable), an 8M camera with a 1.9M front camera (8M camera, 1.2M front camera) and a larger 1900mAH battery over the 1440mAH battery of the iPhone. It also might be easier to type on with its 4.3 inch, 256 ppi display even though its not retina compared to the 4 inch, 326 ppi on the iPhone.

Now HTC's offerings are closer to the iPhone's but we can't overlook that low light performing UltraPixel camera and BoomSound Speakers, starting off with the dual-core 1,4 GHz processor (dual-core 1.3GHz), 16GB of internal storage with 1GB of RAM, non expandable (16/32GB of internal storage with 1GB of RAM, non expandable), a 4 UltraPixel camera with a 1.6 front facing camera (HTC gets angry when you don't say ultra pixels) compared to the 8M camera and 1.2M front camera and of course the battery which is 1800mAH (1440mAH). 4.3 inches with 342 ppi~

HTC has got to be the lowest with their offerings at this price point, Sony however tells a completely different story with their Xperia ZR. First off, this phone is not exactly a mini version of the Xperia Z but seems more like a refined and simplified version instead. To highlight its primary unique feature, this phone is completely WATERPROOF (the Z was just water resistant), yes it has a higher IP rating. The phone starts with a quad-core, 1.5GHz processor (dual-core, 1.3GHz), 8GB of internal storage with 2GB of RAM, user upgradable (16/32GB of internal storage with 1GB of RAM, non expandable storage), a 13M camera and a VGA front camera (8M camera, 1.2M front camera) and lastly a 2300mAH battery over the 1440mAH battery. 4.5 inch, 323 ppi.

Like I said, the ZR seems like it is of a much higher price range so the phone from Sony I should compare it to is the Xperia SP, not waterproof but its most distinct feature is the LED strip which acts as a notification light but is also able to act as an equaliser, pulsing lights to follow the beat of the song. Starting with its processor at 1.7GHz, dual-core (1.3GHz.... You've probably memorized these by now... so nevermind), 8GB of internal storage with 1GB of RAM, an 8M camera and a VGA front camera with a whooping 2370mAH battery, the highest in this category! 4.7 inch, 319 ppi.

Okay, let's look at Huawei, who seems to be offering their flagship within this price range, the Huawei Ascend P6, its unique features include a 5M front camera (selfie camera alert!) and it being the thinnest of the phones in this class that I know of (6.2 mm to be exact). Because this is their flagship, it has a quad core, 1.5GHz processor, 8GB of internal storage with 2GB of RAM, an 8M camera and a 5M front camera with a 2000mAH battery. To be honest, this phone is one of the most attractive phones I've ever laid my eyes on! 4.7 inch, 312 ppi.

Other options from other years are nothing but aplenty, Samsung S3, LG Nexus 4, LG Optimus 4X HD, HTC One X+, LG Optimus G... but since we're talking this year, you don't have to look them up.

Are you interested in Windows Phone? Because Nokia offers their old flagship the Lumia 920 with 1.5GHz dual core processors, 32GB of internal storage with 1GB of RAM, 8M camera with OIS that boasts great low light performance and a 2000mAH battery as well as a 4.5 inch screen, 332 ppi. Another one would be the HTC 8X but that's last year so focus on the Lumia!

I hope this helps, but in the end, YOU will be using the phone, not me, not your friend, but YOU so buy what makes you happy! however if you still buy the iphone something has got to be wrong with you when everything else beats the **** out of it, oh I give up!

Wonderful Scenery Pictures

I was browsing through the internet and just thought I'd look for some new wallpapers for me laptop when I found these amazing pictures!

And the last one, my personal favourite,

That is all, you can even download them cause I just googled these images

Pokemon X and Y releasing in October!

Probably one of the best news I have received this year involves Pokemon X and Y!

This is the pokemon game to be released for the Nintendo 3ds. And it is beautiful~ Check out these trailers!

Flagships, are meant to fly~

To be honest, I've been wanting to post phone stuff just about all the time after I introduced one into my world, but I just didn't know how, so excuse these posts for being late but I'm trying to catch up on everything that I wanted to write about but was so lazy of doing so =)

So Sony had just released its first flagship phone ever, before this, Sony was just aiming for the midrange market and I can tell you, some of their offerings are great because of that but yeah, a first flagship smartphone, dubbed the Xperia Z. Did you know that the Xperia Z has a hydrophobic twin called the Xperia ZL, they're very similar except that the ZL has a physical shutter button and the Z is without one, the ZL is also smaller but sports the same processor and camera AND its not water resistant, and (believe me this is the last 'and') it has an IR Blaster (meaning you can use the phone like a remote for your TV, technology nowadays *sigh*).

Believe me, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference at first glance, oh yea, the front camera is at the bottom bezel instead of the top bezel.

God, there is just so much to talk about but there are also a lot of recent updates so I'll try to cover them both so my blog will be jumping from one subject to another~

Xperia Z, the dream phone I've always wanted

Ahhhh, I still remember the time I first watched the ad Sony had posted on their new flagship phone, the Xperia Z and it was quite literally the phone I've had always dreamed of! Here's the ad.

I know this post is a tad bit late, but the story behind my liking of smartphones stemmed from when I was going to get my very own smartphone. The start of that story was what led to me reading up and comparing smartphones. My first thought was, what did this all mean? They had a long list of specifications, all from the processor to the display to the camera to the battery life. I had my own share of homework to research those and alhamdulillah, now, I can practically understand why that phone is good or bad and also know whether the company is just outright cheating you out of your money. It was with this research that I've settled for my current smartphone, Xperia Sola. But quite enough about that, before this interest, I did imagine a world where smartphones would just be one transparent slab of glass that could magically show images. And those images would be inside the glass slab, just floating there.

Something like the walkman here, except you can see through the glass and you could never tell where the screen started or where it would end. Then, Sony just had to release this gem,

Yeah, go back to my imagined phone and the only thing lacking here was the transparent glass slab but EVERYTHING else was in line! And after understanding a smartphone's specifications, it just got better, at the time of its release, this topped any other phone compared to it. It had a quad core processor, clocked at 1.5 ghz, a full HD 1080p display, the Samsung S3 had a 720p display and a whooping 13 mp camera. Yeap, and just to make things better, it was water resistant, YOU COULD FRIGGIN DUNK THIS THING INTO WATER

But of course when reality struck and I started reading reviews of this thing, you just had to come to realise that nothing is perfect. This phone had a washed out screen when tilted just a bit (who views the phone at an angle anyways) and the camera didn't deliver like people wanted it to (I still think its a good camera) plus the phone's speaker was tiny (both speakers, I blame waterproofing). You might think that I'm biased and I agree with you, I am, because this phone was something I had dreamed of when I was a kid and Sony just made it come true. This does not mean I disagree with its flaws, in fact, I'm frustrated that Sony pulled some punches with this device that was supposed to rival the HTC Butterfly, HTC One, Samsung S4, iphone 5 and Oppo Find 5. So Sony, get your game up and fix what people didn't like, and next time, no more pulling punches... Promise? =)