Fairphone’s significant camera update .. Long before Google and Samsung began providing seven years of software updates on their flagship phones, Fairphone was well-known for its long-lasting, sustainable, and repairable phones.
However, a lengthy software update cycle is useless if new features aren’t consistently added while a device is in production. With a significant camera update for the Fairphone 4, Fairphone demonstrated how it’s done. To discover out how Fairphone accomplished this, I had a conversation with Javier Manique, the company’s technical product manager.
What’s new for the Fairphone 4 camera?
The business offers some stunning before and after pictures.
In February 2024, Fairphone unveiled a significant surprise camera improvement for the Fairphone 4. The phone was first released in 2021, and support is expected to last until the end of 2026. The company’s constant goal is to increase the window whenever feasible, but it might not always be able to do so because key essential hardware-software interactions are dependent on Qualcomm chips.
In order to bring the camera performance closer to what the Fairphone 5 is capable of producing, Fairphone significantly enhanced it with this upgrade. The business claims to have achieved a staggering 230% improvement in first shot time, improved electronic image stabilization in movies, and improved low-light shot quality with greater details and contrast under all circumstances. The camera in particular was one of my complaints in my review, which is something that many of Fairphone’s users also feel, according to Manique, so I’m grateful for the enhancements.
At least according to the comparison photos that Fairphone supplied, the outcomes speak for themselves. All things considered, the image quality has improved steadily, with some especially notable gains occurring when zooming and in low light.
How was the large work completed by the group of over seventy people?
It all comes down to making wise use of the resources at hand.
The key query is: how was this upgrade accomplished by a tiny team of, based on the Fairphone website, roughly seventy people? After all, the photography teams of Samsung, Google, Apple, and other competitors probably exceed those of Fairphone as a whole. According to Manique, the key is to use the lessons learned from using the Fairphone 5.
“Obviously, we’ve made various updates over the years, but we want to address the camera issue more broadly and improve it even further with software updates,” Manique says. “We collaborated with a new partner to develop the Fairphone 5 camera’s software. Additionally, our partner provided us with a wealth of experience that we have since accumulated and can apply to the Fairphone 4. One feature we intended to add to the Fairphone 4 in order to enhance user experience and create a cohesive software suite for our community was the camera from the Fairphone 5.
It might surprise you to learn that a smartphone maker contacts different partners, but this is a standard procedure in the business, particularly for tiny or up-and-coming companies. Similar to how nothing began with off-the-shelf software for the Phone 1, gradually modifying it to its taste, this is also taking place. Manique says, “When you’re evaluating new camera features, you need to make the decision to use different algorithms from different brands for camera tuning.”
I also wanted to know Manique’s thoughts on community initiatives such as GCam modifications, which are essentially Android phone ports of the Google camera. The community reports that while these were very successful on the Fairphone 3, accessing all the components required for these modifications to function properly became more challenging with the release of the Fairphone 4 and 5. Regretfully, the corporation doesn’t consider this a priority, which makes sense. “We are concentrating on our own app right now because it is something we can manage, and we are adding all those features and responsiveness to our own app.”
What kind of future can we anticipate?
Android 14; Fairphone on the US market; hardware updates
Since the Fairphone 4 is now offered in the US, I was also curious about the company’s intentions for the Fairphone 5. Regretfully, there’s nothing to report at this time on this front. “At this time, Fairphone 5 is mostly being developed in Europe. We may eventually expand into the US market, but it will require a revision of our antennas as they are more specifically tuned for the European market than for global use. Manique pointed out that a lot of large brands typically provide US and foreign versions of their phones as well, which poses a far greater issue for a business like Fairphone that sells fewer units.
To give the Fairphone 3 a significant update that wasn’t just achievable through software back in the day, the company unveiled a new camera module. We were interested to find out if Fairphone has similar intentions for its most recent two phones for this reason. However, it appears that the approach has evolved and the business took some lessons from the Fairphone 3 update.
“Instead of having only a one-to-one replacement in hardware with another software on top, the decision was made to have this upgrade for the Fairphone 4 with software only that can benefit all consumers,” Manique informs me. “We realized there was still space for improvement, so rather than producing more e-waste, we seized the chance to make it accessible to everyone.” That is unquestionably good news for the environment.
Finally, more good news: Fairphone has reaffirmed to us that it will update Android 14 to both the Fairphone 4 and 5, having previously hinted at the upgrade on its blog. Although the manufacturer has not previously stated if Android 14 will be compatible with the Fairphone 4, it appears that all potential issues have been resolved. According to Manique, Android 14 will be available “in the coming months for both devices, Fairphone 5 and Fairphone 4.” But for the time being, this enormous camera upgrade will have to do.
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