High Resolution iPhone Camera Under Research

We all know by now, that a camera endowed with optical lenses renders images with a higher quality than any other digital cameras we usually find incorporated in  mobile devices. It seems that Apple is preparing a new surprise for us in this area. We have evidence stating that they are working on a hybrid product, which will allow iPads and iPhones to carry a  camera with higher resolution and optical zoom lens, while preserving a slim look.

A lot of Apple’s patented inventions never get materialized, but we are pretty sure this one will, especially now when the iPhone Photography service is growing its fans. The iPhoneography, as some call it,  would match perfectly with the rumors concerning Apple implementing higher standard cameras on future devices.

Not to mention that this invention could even save some money for the Apple company. We all remember the patent filed by Apple in 2011, the one called Digital camera with light splitter. You should know that as a consequence to that, we all have now our iPads or iPhones endowed with a camera that has movable lens, movement made possible by a cube which can split light into its component colors: blue, green and red.

The patent we were telling you about, pictures a component from the digital camera, with a light splitter cube ( as seen below), which has a face entrance in order to be able to receive incident light from the picture scene.

Apple tells us about a three-faced cube, able to split the light in its three primary component colors. In order to receive the colors components that come from the cubes faces, three image sensors are also incorporated in the camera. Of course, the patent describes and claims more embodiments, as these wouldn’t be enough to render the image.

Another advantage is, that by using the optical cube system, light is no longer sent directly to the mobile camera, so it doesn’t require any more color filtering because the cube only sends certain colors to the sensors.

This is one of the reasons for which Apple proposed the use of clear pixel array sensors. They don’t need or have color filter or separation possibilities, which makes them less expensive and more accurate, now that the color interpolation is no longer required.

Using this color split technique, according to Apple, the quantity of light incident on every pixel is almost three times bigger than the one coming through a color filter array sensor (CFA).

This innovation allows the Apple company to save the money they would have spent on expensive camera sensors, and more than that, it should be able to render more clear images and deeper saturated coloring.

This is not the first application patent which described a way to improve the camera of the iPhone.

Apple tried before to remove blurred images, and even some errors found in iPhoneography by giving to costumers the possibility to choose from more than one range of photographs.

By improving its digital camera with optical lens, might help Apple to set some differentiators from Samsung’s products, which grew fast in popularity due to last year’s release of Android-driven Galaxy Camera.

More than that, Apple needs right now to lower costs for iPad and iPhone, if they want to be able to compete in evolving markets, like India for instance, where the prices in this area are way lower than what they have at the moment.