Light cameras are coming to Xiaomi smartphones via new partnership

Light, the company with a specialty for creating multiple-lensed cameras in small form factors, just announced a new partnership with Chinese smartphone OEM Xiaomi. This means that, at some point in the future, we’re likely to see a Xiaomi smartphone powered by Light technology.

The most recent example of Light’s camera tech is in the Nokia 9 PureView, a smartphone with a penta-lens camera on the rear (that’s five lenses!).

Where Light really shines (see what I did there?) is creating software that allows all those lenses to work together. In other words, any smartphone OEM can shove as many lenses as it likes into a device, but getting all those lenses to create something cohesive is the real trick. This is called computational photography.

Neither Light nor Xiaomi gave any indication of when we would see a smartphone borne from this partnership. However, since the agreement is just being publicized now it’s a pretty safe bet that we wouldn’t see something on sale to the public before the end of this year or possibly early 2020.

Whatever the smartphone might be — and whenever it might be released — we can expect the phone to be a photography powerhouse. Judging from Xiaomi’s current smartphone lineup, we can also expect the device to be priced relatively low, at least when compared to the competition.

What do you think? Would you buy a Xiaomi smartphone powered by Light technology? Let us know in the comments!

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