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Xiaomi partners with Light, the company behind the Nokia 9 PureView's camera

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By Joshua Swingle

Published: Feb 26, 2019, 10:19 AM

The Nokia 9 PureView

While Xiaomi’s smartphone cameras are fairly decent, they often lag behind those of the competition. But thanks to a new partnership with Light this could all change.

Because this collaboration is still in the early stages, there’s no news on future designs or release dates. Nevertheless, the goal of it all will be to create multi-camera smartphones that offer DSLR-level capabilities. This will be achieved by blending Xiaomi’s smartphone know-how with Light’s advanced computational image technology.

A recent example of Light’s work is the Nokia 9 PureView. This smartphone was developed with HMD Global and boasts a whopping five cameras on the rear. The setup features two 12-megapixel RGB sensors combined with three separate 12-megapixel monochrome cameras.

When taking a photo, all sensors work together to collect lighting, detail, and color data before stitching all five images together to create one. However, it’s worth pointing out that each camera can independently adjust exposure, focus, and dynamic range.

The setup, which results in at least 60-megapixels of processed data, also creates a whopping 1,200 layers of depth when shooting bokeh images. Each of these layers gets progressively blurrier, thus making the final effect look much more natural than previously possible. Moreover, with the help of the Google Photos app, Nokia 9 PureView users can adjust the focus point even after taking the picture.

Nokia’s flagship is obviously just one example of how Light’s technology can be implemented and over time things can only improve. But with competitors now starting work on their own alternatives, it’ll be interesting to see which smartphone brand comes out on top.