Xiaomi MIUI camera app teardown reveals ultra wide angle support, beauty mode for body

Xiaomi smartphones have made major strides in terms of camera capabilities, slowly closing the gap to top-flight competition. Now, a teardown of the Xiaomi MIUI camera app has potentially revealed a few details about future photography features.

The teardown, conducted by XDA-Developers, reveals that the company is working on an ultra wide angle mode. This is particularly noteworthy because the Chinese brand doesn’t have a phone with an ultra wide angle rear camera. If confirmed, this means Xiaomi joins LG, Huawei, and Samsung as four of the most prominent brands with the feature.

The outlet also found a few more ultra wide angle references, such as picture distortion correction and ultra wide bokeh shots. Speaking of bokeh, it seems like Xiaomi is finally implementing simulated aperture adjustments to tweak bokeh effects. This has long been a fixture on dual-camera phones from the likes of HUAWEI, Nokia and Samsung, so we’re glad to see the company seemingly catching up here.

What else is Xiaomi doing?

The manufacturer is also working on a feature dubbed Live Shot or Dynamic Photos, according to XDA. It sounds like a take on Google’s Motion Photos, but the strange thing is that the app has separate references to Motion Photos as well. So we’ll probably need to wait a while to see what Xiaomi is actually doing with these features.

Another intriguing feature uncovered by the outlet is an expanded beauty mode, targeting more than just your face. In fact, this beauty mode contains references to shoulders, legs, and body. Beauty modes have become one of the most popular camera features today, but could an expanded mode deliver more than just ridiculously smooth skin? Well, I’m betting it’ll trim a few pounds off your frame.

Finally, the Xiaomi MIUI camera app teardown also reveals new effects for portrait mode and videos, a Live Music mode (presumably letting you record a short video and add a track to it), and the existence of a Xiaomi phone with a 48MP primary camera and an unspecified secondary camera.

The latter is seemingly obvious, owing to the trend of dual and triple camera smartphones in the first place. But quite a few chipsets lack explicit support for 48MP single camera setups, let alone a 48MP camera alongside a secondary shooter. In any event, Xiaomi is apparently dubbing its solution “ultra pixel photography,” which is presumably a reference to the 48MP camera’s pixel-binned approach.

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