Tag Archive for: spec

Samsung S21 Ultra spec leak confirms additional camera hardware


Today, we have another Galaxy S21 leak, which seems to confirm some of the specs that have been floating around, published by WinFuture. Information about and images of Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S21-series phones have been landing almost daily in the run-up to Samsung’s January event. With this newest leak, we now have a better idea of what to expect — especially in the camera department. In short, the hardware appears to be a big part of Samsung’s plan to take on the highly capable iPhone 12 Pro Max.

The S21 Ultra will reportedly offer 3x and 10x telephoto cameras (72mm and 240mm equivalent focal lengths, respectively), both with optical image stabilization. That’s one additional rear-facing camera compared to the S20 Ultra’s three rear sensors.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra

Photo: WinFuture

The S21’s 10x lens will use a folded optic design like that of the S20’s telephoto camera. We expect that Samsung will once again offer hybrid zoom that reaches much farther than that 10x optical range.

Some other subtle camera updates look to be on the way, too. The main 108-megapixel camera gets a slightly wider 24mm (versus 26mm) equivalent lens. It will also get laser-assisted autofocus: something that the S20 Ultra didn’t offer but the Note 20 Ultra later introduced. And WinFuture says that despite the main camera sensor’s on-paper similarities to the last generation, this is a new sensor that should offer better image quality than the last.

Samsung will need every advantage to compete with the iPhone 12 Pro Max, which we think is the best smartphone camera on the market today. Historically, Samsung has taken more of a hardware-heavy approach to mobile imaging, increasingly using its own house-made sensors rather than grabbing Sony’s off the shelf, and being early to adopt dual- and triple-lens cameras on its devices.

Part of the reason Samsung has leaned so hard into advanced hardware is that its computational photography hasn’t kept up with either Apple or Google. Only recently has it come up to par with features like Night Mode. But now it’s another year, and there’s more work to be done to catch up…

Source…

Microsoft goes its own way with Web audio/video spec, despite W3C rebuff

Microsoft has published a working prototype of CU-RTC-Web, its proposed specification for enabling browser-based, plugin-free, real-time audio and video communication.

CU-RTC-Web isn’t the only proposal for such a specification. In fact, it’s not even the main one. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the group that formalizes the development and specification of Web-related standards, has its own group working on a plugin-free, real-time audio and video communication specification called WebRTC. Preliminary—and somewhat rudimentary—support for WebRTC is found in current versions of Chrome and Firefox.

This support certainly isn’t finished yet, and interoperability between the browsers remains troublesome—many of the online WebRTC demos are built for Chrome alone and won’t work with Firefox at all—but in theory they’re on track to support the same specification in a manner that will eventually be compatible.

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