The Real Truth About Smartphone Camera Partnerships

I started the research for this article by

taking a look at the different camera

partnerships that have existed with

smartphone brands over the years from

the xenon flash that existed on the sony

Ericsson k800 cyber shot to Huawei and

Leica partnership to Zios on sony Nokia

and Vivo phones and now one plus one

Hasselblad all of these cameras

partnerships with smartphone brands have

tried to revolutionize the smartphone

photography in one way or the other

however not all of these partnerships

have succeeded and there have been good

and bad aspects to it and even today

whenever someone talks about cameras on

smartphones are the first three brands that

come to mind are google Samsung and

apple three brands that haven't had any

sort of brand partnership yet so the

question is should the other brands stop

trying it all together or you know try

to persist and find out ways to

revolutionize smartphone photography

that's what we're gonna explore in this article.

Huawei x Leica

now one of the best camera partnerships

on smartphones according to me has to be

the Huawei and Leica partnership it

started off with the Huawei p9 and now

it has become so good that the p20 pro i

remember was one of my favorite favorites

camera phones out there essentially

these phones were co-engineered with

Leica where Leica lenses were used but

the fun fact is these Leica lenses were not

really glass but actually plastic and

interestingly the p series camera

smartphone lenses are actually

manufactured by a third party on a

blueprint of specifications provided by

Huawei and like up you know agreed upon

by them together now this partnership

was only meant for still photos however

leica's engineers and Huawei's engineers

worked together initially at least for

building on you know the kind of you

know standards and protocols that would

go into creating the kind of images that

you got it from the p series phones where

Leica would actually work deeply with

the Huawei team to work on how the

sensor the isp and the tuning would be

done on these phones and there were

special Leica color modes as well as a

black and white photography board which

started off in the Huawei p9 was so damn

good I've taken some pictures of it

and the kind of results that I got with

it was actually very very impressive in

fact do you remember the p30 pro i

distinctly remember one of this

an excellent travelogue that I saw made by

Sandhill Sharma when he was with rev

atlas and the kind of footage that he

put out there it was crazy what those

cameras could actually achieve but

unfortunately Leica's inputs in these p

series phones started dwindling after

the p30 pro with the p40 pro and the p50

pro however this exclusive partnership

with Leica is ending soon for Huawei and

that makes sense considering Huawei

doesn't have such deep entrenched uh you

know smartphone presence all across the

globe after its dispute with us and

obviously, Leica is looking for a new

partner and they did end up working with

sharp on their phone shaft Aquas r6 but

I don't think that's some sort of

exclusive deal and more importantly that

the same phone was rebranded and made into a

Leica lights one

very own original smartphone now the

the most interesting thing about both these

phones are the fact that it has a massive

the one-inch sensor which is used from the

Sony RX 100 mark iv now the important

the thing to note here with these phones is

that it doesn't really matter if you

have the hardware

Leica and sharp both don't have the

computational photography chops and

therefore you ended up with a bad dynamic

range performance some slow shutter

speed issues so yeah so there were some

issues that existed with these phones

cameras as well and that was covered by

international YouTubers now i think that

the only brand that like I can partner

with right now is Xiaomi and it makes

sense as well considering the me11 ultra

was such a great phone and Xiaomi's next

the phone you know partnered with Leica's

prowess could actually be a great great

product and you must be wondering why

can't they partner with somebody like an

Oppo, Vivo, or oneplus now oneplus has

already partnered with Hasselblad which

we are aware of and apparently the

Hasselblad partnership is also now going

to extend to oppo as well considering

the two brands have merged together now

and you know we might see the Hasselblad

partnership in the find x5 as well and

we're already aware that Vivo has

partnered with zios on its lenses and

you could find it on the x60 pro plus

x70 pro plus and whichever next x series

the phone is going to come

Zeiss x Sony, Vivo, Nokia

now unlike the Leica partnership which

is gently and exclusive Zeiss generally

has a more free-flowing hand with

different brands that it works with

however, it is generally restricted to

the Zeiss t-star coating on the lenses

of these smartphones, it started if you

remember with the Nokia n9 and then went

down to the Nokia 808 pr view and of

course the Nokia 9 PureView that was

launched with android recently and

obviously the Zayas partnership also

extended to v100 like I mentioned so it

is present on the Vivo x series of

phones like the x60 pro plus and the x70

pro plus and interestingly the Vivo

the partnership doesn't just limit itself to

the Zeiss t-star coating lens also

extends to fun, uh you know Zeiss

portrait modes that have been integrated

within the camera app itself has said

that's not really you know

revolutionizing smartphone camera

photography but just some additional

modes that you get with it I think that

the Zeiss partnership is generally just

limited to the lenses and it's not very

deeply integrated with the sensor the

isp and the algorithm interestingly

zeiss's partnership with sony also

extends way back especially considering

the fact that they've made zeiss lenses

on sony's very own full-frame lenses as

well now this partnership is also

extended to smartphones it started off

with the Sony Xperia 1 mark ii but it's

important to know that sony also makes

its own alpha lineup of cameras which

are possibly the best and which is the

one that we're actually using to shoot

this video as well now this alpha tech

has now also been extended to sony's

very own smartphones as well so much so

that one of sony's latest phones the

sony Xperia pro I actually comes with a

one inch sensor that was used in the

sony rx100 mark seven but that sensor

inside the Sony Xperia pro I also comes

with the catch, you don't get the entire

one inch sensor you actually get a

the cropped sensor of one by 1.3 inch only

and while sony makes great hardware

undoubtedly great hardware its

computational photography shops are not

as good as you know apple Samsung or

Google and therefore struggles with

the high dynamic range performance in photographs

Oneplus x Hasselblad

now coming to the final camera

smartphone partnership is the one plus and

Hasselblad partnership now we've seen

three phones with this Hasselblad

the partnership already which is the one plus

9 the 9 pro and the oneplus 10 pro and

the initial reviews of especially the

oneplus 9 pro weren't very positive yes

they've improved the facial tones and

later added an expand mode as well but

the results were generally not very

consistent across the board a lot of

reviewers actually felt that the oneplus

8 pro took better pictures than the

oneplus 9 pro and I think that it i

actually too early for us to judge and

say if Hasselblad has made a huge

difference to the oneplus partnership i

think we'll have to wait and watch to

see how they improve it over a period of

time so finally should brand actually

stop these partnerships no I don't think

so that is the case now let me tell you

that most professional cameras don't do

any sort of inbuilt hdr bracketing they

depend on the photographers to take you

know multiple levels of exposure you

know in different f-stops and actually

process them in post and smartphones

need to have this computational

photography prowess primarily because

the physical space that you have for

adding these very tiny lenses and then

to actually create the kind of big

the camera you know depth and bokeh you need

to have some sort of background

processing to be able to achieve the

difference between the subject and the

background to do even something like a

a fake blur which is of course called a

portrait mode now and even something

like low light photography where these

small sensors can't let in a lot of

light so there are you know ways where

smartphone brands actually use

computational photography to improve

that and that's called the night mode so

yeah so hdr night mode low light

photography all of this happens in

software in fact a lot of folks are also

saying that traditional camera brands

should try something like this where

they use the power of you know a

smartphone chip to create uh you know

in-camera processing as well and also

improve in-camera processing more

importantly having said that don't hold

out your hope for that but if the smartphone

brands are trying out partnerships with

camera brands I personally feel that

they should you know use them for the

kind of hardware prowess they have and

do the software processing in-house so

those were my consolidated thoughts on

camera partnerships and smartphone

brands do let me know in the comment

the section below what you think about it

until next time this is air shirt signing

off keep track in and stay safe