Samsung, a leading mobile handset developer, just introduced its next-generation Android-based Galaxy S III smartphone. Optionally powered by a Samsung-developed 1.4 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A9-based SoC (a dual-core Qualcomm-based model will also be offered), its formidable processing horsepower naturally begs the question of how the company plans to harness it.
From the coverage I've seen so far, at least three of the touted features have direct embedded vision relevance:
- Perhaps not surprisingly, given that it's based on Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich", the Galaxy S III will support optional facial recognition-based unlock capabilities.
- Reminiscent of Tobii's eye-tracking technology, the Galaxy S III's front-facing image sensor will "keep an eye" on the user's eyes and prevent the unit's display from dimming (or the handset from more generally going into standby) for as long as the phone discerns that it's being observed, and
- As the image above shows, after you take a photo the cameraphone will search its contacts database and, if it finds a facial match, will auto-tag the person(s) (but apparently not dogs) and suggest that you send him/her/them an email, SMS, "tweet" or other heads-up.
Followup: Another embedded vision feature I became aware of via the video below (thanks to GigaOM for the heads-up) involves analytics. The Galaxy S III's processor will analyze eight consecutive shots snapped in burst mode, and then recommend to you what it considers to be the "best" one. Jump to 2:22 for the portion of the clip dealing with camera features
