Last Updated on 03/20/2014 by Chris Gampat
Smartphones are steadily becoming more and more serious picture and video taking machines, and so more and more serious photographers embrace their capabilities. Though still nowhere as sophisticated as most higher-end digital cameras, smartphones today offer good image quality and often a plethora of manual settings. On the downside, they often lack some of the functionality of full-fledged cameras such as DSLRs or mirrorless offerings.
Apple has decided to take on that problem, and has patented a remote control for the iPhone’s integrated camera. But it’s not just a remote control. As we would expect from Apple, they’ve done the full monty, and have made it wireless plus given it its own secondary display. According to the patent description, the device exchanges all kinds of information with the camera, such as operating mode, settings, as well as preview images and video.
From what it sounds like, we assume that the remote runs its own software, which means that potentially it could also containt functionality for time-lapse photography and the like. The great advantage of setting up your iPhone camera via a remote control is that you won’t have to fiddle with the iPhone itself. Instead, you can just put it on a tripod, connect the remote, and program the camera form there. Of course, this just being a patent, there’s no guarantee such an iPhone remote will be coming anytime soon.
In other news, Google has decided that operating your Android smartphone’s camera app by hand is far too complicated, and that it would be much more awesome if you could just tell your phone to take a picture or record a video. And so it has added two new voice commands to Google Search: “take a picture” and “take a video.” Seriously. Give it a try. Though it may not be working in all regions yet.
Via dpreview connect and Android Authority