2018 has passed by us quietly without delay. In the past year, there have been many excellent mobile phones, and these products have a very obvious development trajectory: many of the previous shortcomings have been gradually supplemented, especially the photography of domestic flagship, which has gradually caught up with the traditional brands, The performance and image system of the thousand yuan machine are no longer so bad.
Many mid-range mobile phones in 2018 are equipped with IMX363, and this sensor can also be found on many domestic flagship phones, such as Xiaomi 8, Xiaomi MIX 3, and Nut R1. Meizu 16X even uses IMX380（ But the price is also higher ）。 One of the characteristics of these CMOS devices is "large bottom". IMX363 is 1.4 μ m. 1.55 for IMX380 μ m. At the end of last year, there were also IMX586 and Samsung's S5KGM1, both of which were 48 million pixels. The four in one technology was used to output 12 million pixels μ M's photo.
After our test, we found that these mobile phones with a price lower than 2000 yuan did not perform poorly in taking photos. Compared with the localization flagship domestic phones, their gap was mainly due to the ISP and the lack of optical anti shake. Last year, many mid-range mobile phones were equipped with Snapdragon 710, which led to the fact that on a congenital basis, they were not as good as the top SoC algorithm.
trend
In fact, it is not difficult to find that a small trend in 2018 is that most midrange mobile phones have adopted CMOS with larger unit pixel size, and its improvement is also immediate. Large size means more light input, so night performance will also be better, while small size such as 1.12 μ m、1.2 μ M has become less and less. But in addition to the big bottom CMOS, in fact, many brands vigorously promoted AI last year. Huawei's and Xiaomi's cameras have corresponding function bonuses, and AI, I believe, will be the mobile phone photography trend in 2019.
Both Kirin 970 and 980 are equipped with NPUs, and the AI processing capacity of Snapdragon 855 is also the main selling point. In December 2018, MediaTek also joined the battle, releasing Helio P90 SoC, a SoC that is positioned at the middle and high end and equipped with special AI processor APU2.0.
The CPU of MediaTek Helio P90 is eight cores, with a 12nm process, 2 x Cortex A75 2.2GHz+6 x Cortex A55, PowerVR GM 9446 GPU with Imaging, and three core ISP（ Can be fully opened ）。 AI is the main selling point of MediaTek Helio P90. Its APU frequency in charge of AI calculation is 624MHz, and the processing speed is up to 1127GMACs. From the AI score of Zurich University, Helio P90 has 25645 points, ranking top.
What can it achieve?
With such a powerful AI computing capability and an ISP that can open all three cores, mobile phones can do a lot of things, and one of the great improvements is, of course, taking photos, which is the result of MediaTek's "true AI camera".
For a long time, the weak light environment is the Achilles heel of mobile phone photography. Due to its size, the mobile phone cannot put too large CMOS into it, so AI can play a very important role here.
Through the AI image noise elimination technology of MediaTek Helio P90 "True AI Camera", it can optimize the imaging characteristics and noise distribution of different CMOS in dark light environment, so as to improve the overall brightness and saturation of the photo and make it look more pleasing. As can be seen from the diagram above, the increase is very obvious, with higher brightness and more details.
(The noise reduction technology of "real AI camera" also has amazing effect in capturing motion)
Not only that, MediaTek's true AI camera can achieve millisecond level quick capture, optimize noise removal and parameters, and make photos more pure. In this way, there will be no residual images that often appear in mobile phone capture.
（ It can be seen that AI cameras can recognize faces more quickly ）
Moreover, with the addition of the powerful AI computing power of Helio P90, the face recognition of "True AI Camera" is more rapid, which can accurately judge the key information such as the gender and angle of the person. If the face recognition speed is fast enough, it can quickly adjust the exposure value and other parameters, and the user can press the shutter earlier.
（ The speed of recognizing objects is also very fast ）
Nowadays, mobile phones have more and more abundant photo taking functions, and various AI beauty and body beauty functions are popular with girls and even boys. Although most mobile phones can play these beauty functions at present, many are just app algorithm applications. On the "real AI camera" of MediaTek, with the AI specialized computing power and AI algorithm, these functions can be played more smoothly, with more accurate recognition of various parts of the human body, and more intelligent adjustment. After all, beauty must look natural.
(Real AI camera video depth of field play is more advanced)
In addition to body beauty, depth of field mode is also a function that people love very much today, and this photography function also enjoys AI computing power and algorithm. Because the mobile phone needs to accurately distinguish the shooting subject from the background, so as to pick out the former and blur the latter. It seems very simple, but in fact, there are not many mobile phones that can do this function well, let alone the real-time depth of field of video. With the powerful AI computing ability of Helio P90, MediaTek can even achieve 1080p/30fps real-time depth of field of video, which makes it more playable.
(The main body of live video characters in the real AI camera is clearer)
MediaTek's true AI camera also has a video "black technology" function, that is, it uses the intelligent focus area detection technology to realize the key area coding of the video picture, so as to improve the video code rate and make the main picture clearer and more detailed. MediaTek calls this technology "focus live broadcast". It is believed that many users who have watched the live broadcast will find that the picture quality of the live broadcast is relatively poor in many cases, especially when the network environment of the broadcaster is poor or fast moving, the main picture will become mosaic or carton, and the focus live broadcast technology of MediaTek can greatly improve the picture quality of the live broadcast. This technology not only has extensive application value in the field of live video broadcasting, but also can greatly improve the user experience when applied to video calls, video conferences and other functions.
A new era
It is easy to see that MediaTek Helio P90 is a SoC focusing on AI. With the powerful AI core APU 2.0, MediaTek can help major brands of mobile phones to significantly improve their photo taking ability at the bottom of the hardware layer, and realize the functional application of "real AI camera", which inevitably makes us look forward to the launch of mobile phones equipped with Helio P90 as soon as possible.
As one of the leaders of edge AI computing, MediaTek even proposed three hard indicators for the "true AI camera" in the mobile phone market: CMOS unit pixel size ≥ 1.5 μ m. AI performance ≥ 21000 points and the use of Imagiq ISP have defined a real AI camera for the industry and consumers from three dimensions of camera specifications, AI computing power and ISP processing power. Each emerging field really needs someone to set standards on a high level, and the whole industry will develop better with it.
Of course, both AI and photography are just one part of the user's overall experience. It has been a long time since MediaTek's flagship SoC. In addition, Qualcomm has monopolized the high-end market for many years, with 845 flagship computers for 18 years and 855 for this year's visual inspection, Samsung's Exynos and Huawei's Kirin are only used in their flagship products, so if MediaTek can join the "mess", it will not be a bad thing for consumers and manufacturers.
However, in terms of 5G, MediaTek has not fallen behind. The Helio M70 baseband released on MWC 2019 is a good proof that it has joined the most important battle in the future with Qualcomm, Huawei and other companies.
AI and 5G will be an important wind vane in the future. Although you have seen many amazing products on the MWC this time, such as Samsung's Galaxy Fold and Huawei's Mate X, these are really innovative products, but compared with the innovation in appearance design, The author believes that AI and 5G are the factors that have the greatest impact on our lifestyle.
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