For the consumer market, camera manufacturers have introduced a number of innovative features. We’ve seen the arrival of HD video recording, facial and smile recognition, multi-point auto-focus, and so much more. What will be the next big thing? Let’s look at some of the possibilities.

Entering the Third Dimension?

Why get stuck with just two dimensions when your photos can literally jump out at you? One of the fastest growing phenomena at the movie theater is 3D, as evidenced by recent films like Up and Monsters vs. Aliens. It could be time to go 3D with our cameras too.

One of the first to enter this market is the Fuji FinePix Real 3D digital camera. From what I can tell, it’s not quite ready for a full retail release just yet, but it does point toward what is possible. The 3D image is generated thanks to dual lenses and dual optics.

The biggest hurdle that we will have to overcome, of course, is having something where we can display these 3D images. There are some 3D LCD monitors out there, but they are far from mainstream for now. These two technologies will need to ramp up in popularity in tandem if either hopes to succeed.

Better Pictures at Night?

Three-dimensional photos may be a fun novelty, but they’re not all that useful. Possibly one of the next useful features to come to consumer cameras will be a better ability to take pictures at night. How?

A couple of guys from New York University have come up with a dark flash innovation that can effectively take much clearer and more accurate photos under low-light conditions. No longer do you have to deal with the shaky and blurry pics like the one shown above.

Most point-and-shoot digital cameras are just fine when they are provided with plenty of light, but most leave us with some really crappy pics when it’s dark outside. Something needs to be done to ameliorate this situation.

This seems to be quite a ways off, however, since those NYU kids are still pretty early on in their development. Even so, we don’t want to buy a camera that is dedicated to low-light photos, so it’ll have to be made more versatile before any sort of commercial release will be possible.

On-Board Picture and Video Editing!

In my humble opinion, the next major digital camera feature that will quickly rise to prominence and spread throughout the industry is on-board editing. There are already a handful of units that have some rudimentary functionality on this front, but they can go so much further.

Taking a look at the Apple iPhone 3G S, you’ll find that you have the ability to crop the videos you record without having to load them onto your computer first. It’s nowhere near what you’d get with iMovie, but this basic video editing can be a very useful feature.

Digital cameras aren’t connected to the Internet in the same way that an iPhone is, but that could be around the corner as well. The Eye-Fi SD card helps, in that regard, and it could be a move that’ll spread with time. If so, it’ll help to be able to edit both your movies and your still photos without the aid of a computer.

Even something as simple as cropping, adjusting brightness, reducing red-eye, and so on can be a huge boon for a point-and-shoot camera. We just need to see these functions refined and made as user-friendly as possible.

What do you think? What would be the “killer feature” that would make you run out and buy a new camera?

When you try to take pictures under lower light conditions, you are largely left with one of two options. You can use the flash and get all sorts of unnatural and uneven lighting. You can avoid the flash and get one big blurry mess. Well, a couple of students are coming up with a much better alternative.

Some people are calling it a “dark” flash, whereas others are referring to it as an “invisible” flash. Whatever you choose to call it, the innovation is supposed to provide us with much better photos at night and under other dim lighting conditions.

Hailing from New York University, Dilip Krishnan and Rob Fergus are developing a two-step technique that can be completely automated in regular digital cameras (and maybe even camera phones). The flashbulb has been modified to emit a wider spectrum of light, but it filters out visible light.

The UV and IR filters that are normally present in camera sensors have also been removed. The net result is a picture that looks like an infrared image, similar to the picture you see on the left. The blur is gone and the lighting is even, but it’s the wrong color, right?

An algorithm takes care of that. A second photo is taken immediately after the second one, but without the “dark” flash being used. By doing so, the camera is able to grab the color information from the resulting grainy and shaky pic. Combining the detail from the first pic with the colors of the second, you get the picture on the right.

This sounds like it could be quite a fantastic innovation if it really works as promised, but it almost sounds like the camera has to be dedicated to this purpose. If they can merge the technology with existing tech for “regular” photos, they could have a very lucrative patent on their hands.

Source: Gizmodo

The economy is going through some tough times and Peek wants to cut you some slack, especially since some of the direct competitors in the market are hitting up the lower end of the price scale too. Cheap is good when you’re watching your wallet, right?

As such, the original Peek Classic handheld has been bumped down to just twenty bucks. For a little more style and flash, you can go for the Peek Pronto. The latter has been knocked down to just $60. Both of those are much cheaper than even a $99 iPhone or BlackBerry Curve.

The bad news is that they’re not cutting any slack when it comes to the monthly service. Unlimited wireless email on either Peek handheld will still run you $20 a month. Remember that the Peek is not a cell phone; it’s a mobile email device.

Given that price, I’d be more inclined to get an all-in-one device, no? The contract price on several smartphones is south of $100 these days. Unlimited email through some carriers is only $15 a month.

Source: WSJ

This is the first 8MP camera phone from Nokia and it should be available in the United States “within the next few weeks.” Regarding the camera, you get a shutter speed of up to 1/1000 of a second, an F-stop range of 2.4 to 4.8, and a wide-angle lens for shots that are a little closer to home.

Outside of the photog-happy features, the Nokia N86 also gets a slide-out numeric keypad, S60 3rd Edition FP2, 2.6-inch AMOLED QVGA display, quad-band GSM, tri-band UMTS, 8GB internal memory, Wi-Fi, and aGPS. The UMTS side of the equation appears to be AT&T-friendly as well.

If you were to find the Nokia N86 overseas, you’d likely find that it is retailing at around the 375 Euro range. At the time it was announced, the exchange rate would have placed it at US$474, but today’s exchange bumps that to US$530. Unfortunately, you’ll be paying neither of those prices.

I guess Nokia is anticipating the exchange rate to continue heading the way it is, because the Nokia USA price for the unlocked N86 is $558. Not cheap, but this is top shelf goodness.

Source: BGR

From the same people that brought us the Wi-Fi Detector Shirt comes the Wi-Fi Detector Cap. This does exactly what you think it does. You toss the hat on your head and the illuminated logo on the front will start to light up in correspondence with the 802.11b/g Wi-Fi strength in your immediate vicinity.

As with the t-shirt, the light-up bars won’t tell you whether the Wi-Fi hotspot is password-protected or not. It also won’t tell you if the Wi-Fi signal will lead you onto the Internet or if it’s just for internal networking purposes. But hey, it’s a start.

Yes, it could be a nice piece of geeky apparel, but it could be even less useful that the accompanying shirt. With the shirt, you can glance down at your chest to see how many bars you are getting. With the cap, you have to take the thing off your head to look at it.

The Wi-Fi Detector Cap can be found on ThinkGeek for $14.99.

Source: TechEBlog

As with so many other phones of this kind, the LG BL40 does not come with a physical keyboard at all, relying instead on its large 4-inch touchscreen display. It may look like a glorified universal remote, but the 21:9 aspect ratio touchscreen gives you plenty of vertical space in portrait mode and even more horizontal space in landscape mode. It’s almost like the Samsung P3 MP3 player, no?

Aside from the uniquely long frame and svelte black casing, the LG BL40 also gets 335MB of internal memory, microSD expansion slot, and some sort of camera on the back. I have a feeling that it’ll launch initially in Korea, but your guess is as good as mine.

Also leaked alongside the LG BL40 is the latest addition to the Chocolate Phone lineup from LG. The LG BL42 is a vertical slider with touch-sensitive controls, a slide-out numeric keypad, and a 5 megapixel camera.

Source: BGR

There is a definite appeal to QWERTY phones, even if they’re not full-fledged smartphones, because they make it so much easier to send quick text messages and emails compared to a T9 configuration.

Joining the likes of the LG Lotus, Samsung Vice, and others of that ilk, the Samsung Link also comes complete with a full QWERTY keyboard, but it takes on a candybar form factor. Aside from the keyboard, however, there isn’t much in terms of hot highlights.

The LCD screen is a mere 2.2-incher and the camera only does 1.3 megapixels. Aside from that, you get a microSD slot, Bluetooth 2.0, and integrated IM and email clients. The first 10,000 customers get a free decal from Decal Girl too.

The good news is that the Samsung Link will be remarkably cheap when it launches on July 30th. The three-year contract price is just $19.95 and you’ll have your choice of black or white. Alternatively, the two-year, one-year, and outright prices are $69.95, $169.95, and $219.95, respectively.

Source: MobileSyrup

Along with what will likely be a slew of other new features, BlackBerry OS 5.0 will add tabbed browsing to the BlackBerry Browser, allowing you to navigate more than one webpage at a time. Other smartphone mobile browsers have been able to handle this for a little while, so it’s good to see that RIM is catching up.

This is still very much a work in progress, but the current build has you going through the BlackBerry menu in order to access the currently opened tabs. There are no keyboard shortcuts set up for the time being, but I hope that they add this before pushing the OS into primetime.

Then again, if you could probably just download any number of third-party browsers onto your BlackBerry to get in on the tabbed surfing action. If you’re feeling exceptionally brave, there is a leaked copy of BB OS 5.0 for the 8900 and Bold, but know that it’s totally unofficial and can be totally filled with bugs.

Source: Intomobile

Powered by Windows Mobile, this smartphone seems like it will be making its way over to the AT&T to join other popular smartphones like the Nokia E71x, BlackBerry Bold, and Apple iPhone 3GS. That looks like quite some competitive company, no?

Aside from its Microsoft-leaning tendencies, the LG GW600 smartphone gets loaded with quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, dual-band WCDMA, a resistive touchscreen, 20-key half-QWERTY keyboard, 3.1 megapixel camera, GPS, Bluetooth, proximity sensor, light sensor, accelerometer, gesture controls, and a microSD slot.

That sounds like quite the impressive set of features, especially since it is able to combine a (near) full QWERTY keyboard with a touchscreen display. There’s no word on pricing and availability just yet, but now that the GW600 has made its way through the FCC, we could be seeing it any day now. Maybe.

Source: PhoneScoop

Currently, the only place where you can find the matte display option is with the pricier 17-inch MacBook Pro. According to some recent rumors, the option for antiglare displays will soon be extended to more Macs.

More specifically, there’s word that the matte display will be offered as an option to buyers of the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the 15-inch MacBook Pro. Regular MacBooks will presumably still get “stuck” with the glossy display.

The glossy display is good for providing “crisp images and vivid colors,” but they’re not so good for video and image editing professionals. The glossy displays “tend to complicate color matching.” Personally, I just don’t like the reflection I get when I use my computer until brighter conditions.

When (and if) the matte option will indeed get extended to the smaller MacBook Pros remains to be seen. Stay tuned.

Source: AppleInsider