vivo reveals ‘Super HDR’ camera tech that captures up to 12 frames per shot

Chinese manufacturer Vivo has been making wakes in the Android world recently with its Apex phone. This is a device that includes an under glass fingerprint sensor as well as a unique way of avoiding bezels and notches. However, the brand’s latest innovation, Super HDR, shows that it is putting effort into the software side of things too.

HDR is a camera setting that allows phones to take photos with a wider range of colors than would normally be possible. It does this by taking multiple frames of the same scene at different exposures and then using the camera’s software to combine those frames into one image.

While HDR has been appearing on smartphone cameras for a few years now, vivo says its Super HDR will improve on existing HDR by supporting a dynamic range of to 14 EV (exposure values)—something it can achieve thanks to the 12 frames per photo it can capture.

As well as the improvements brought by the extra frames, vivo says that its Super HDR uses AI to analyse the scene, choose the correct exposure to use when snapping the photos, and then select which frames to merge.

While it is, of course, still far too early to tell just how effective vivo’s Super HDR will be, the photos provided alongside the announcement are certainly impressive; a landscape photo of a field and a mountain with the sun in the background shows the kind of contrast that can be achieved.

Another particularly impressive photo shows a couple at a beach with the sun setting behind them. If taken on another camera, this kind of scene could have ended up with the people in the photo being heavily silhouetted, or with the background being completely washed out; in the vivo image, the entire photo is very well lit.

Sadly, the announcement from vivo didn’t mention which phone Super HDR would feature on, reports from China seem to suggest that it will feature on the upcoming vivo Apex.