The best smartphone cameras are pretty much all the same across the board, with similar megapixel specs, HD video capabilities, and zoom functions. If—or rather when—Lytro’s licenses their light field technology to smartphones, we’d finally have something entirely new on our hands.
Capturing the all of the light traveling in every direction when a photo is taken, the cameras let you focus an image after it’s shot, creating, in essence, “living” images. Steve Jobs was one of the many industry players intrigued by the technology, according to Forbes writer and Inside Apple writer Adam Lashinsky. He met with Lytro CEO Ren Ng in June 2011, with plans to later discuss how Lytro could be integrated into Apple products.
Now, according to Lytro chairman Charles Chi, the company is strongly considering licensing their camera to a worthy collaborator in the smartphone market, admitting Lytro has “the capital to do that, the capability in the company to do that, and… the vision to execute.”
