As if Android fans didn’t already have enough reasons to eagerly anticipate Android 5.0 Lollipop coming to their phones, here’s another: It looks like the newest software will give your phone’s camera some significant improvements. Forbes contributor Paul Monckton notices that Lollipop adds built-in support for raw image files right at the OS level, which is something he says should help you produce higher quality images with your phone’s camera.
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“Raw image files are essentially a dump of all of the image data captured by the camera’s sensor, most of which is lost when converting into the, much smaller, JPEG files we most commonly use,” he explains. “This means [there is] the potential for much better image quality from existing camera hardware simply by installing the upcoming Android 5.0 update.”
While the standard Android 5.0 camera app will still deliver the more compressed JPEG files, third-party developers will be able to create apps that can take advantage of Lollipop’s support for raw image files to help you snap pictures that are much more vivid and detailed than what you’re getting now on your Android phone’s current software. Essentially, the support for raw image files can give you more control over which parts of the photo data you want to keep and which parts you want to throw away when you convert to a JPEG or other file type, whereas the traditional Android camera app will make those decisions for you.
To read more about Monckton’s experience taking pictures using a prototype app that takes advantage of Lollipop’s raw image support, click the source link below.
