What is a photography benchmark?

In recent two years, more and more mobile phone manufacturers have begun to pay attention to the development of mobile phone images. From the initial 1 20,000 pixels to the current1100 million pixels, in just one year, we have to feel the rapid development of images. Just like some domestic mobile phone manufacturers we are familiar with, they all have their own mature optimization schemes in terms of image capability and image system. However, in addition to sensor and image optimization, there is another hardware that deserves our attention, and that is ISP. Recently, according to well-known bloggers, OPPO is about to start developing its own ISP.

(Weibo bloggers broke the news that OPPO will also develop its own ISP)

Besides the familiar technical terms such as sensors and lenses, what is an ISP? The so-called ISP, the abbreviation of image signal processor, is generally used to process the image signal output by the image sensor. It is the core device of image processing, occupies the core leading position in the mobile phone image system and is an important part of the mobile phone chip system. In a simple sentence, it can explain the sharpening, noise reduction and color optimization of our mobile phone pictures, as well as the common functions of autofocus, automatic exposure, automatic noise reduction, color adjustment, object recognition and automatic white balance in computational photography. Whether it is the previous two beats or the current five beats, image processing depends on ISP chips.

(Image signal processing flow)

However, why should OPPO develop its own ISP? This may be related to OPPO's own imaging system. Usually, ISP and mobile phone processor are packaged together. It is rumored that the ISP in Qualcomm also needs to buy it separately. If you want to use a good ISP, you must communicate with Qualcomm in advance, and then package them together in the processor. However, Qualcomm updates the SoC of mobile phones every year, which means that ISPs have to iterate all the time, which leads mobile phone manufacturers to buy new ISPs if they want better imaging effect. Perhaps OPPO wants to get a new direction of progress in the image, so as to avoid the situation that there is no ISP available because of the bottleneck in Qualcomm in the future.

(OPPO Find X3 Pro imaging system)

In fact, it is not difficult for OPPO to develop its own ISP. After all, OPPO's innovation strength and R&D strength are here. Take the ten-zoom version of OPPO Reno, which we are most familiar with. In 20 19, when most mobile phones are using double optical zoom, the ten-zoom version of OPPO Reno has released five-fold optical zoom for the first time, and supports up to ten-fold hybrid optical zoom image modules. It's 202 1 in a blink of an eye. OPPO Find X3 series applies the image processing mode of full link 10bit to the mobile phone, and also uses a curved lens, which solves the shortcomings of distorted and blurred edges of the previous super wide-angle lens. As shown in the patent map, as early as 20 18, OPPO has developed a five-fold dimming patent, which shows that OPPO is still quite powerful in the imaging field.

(OPPO five times light change patent)

Generally speaking, according to the existing image strength of OPPO, I believe that the self-developed ISP chip is not just talk. What is the strength of this self-developed chip? Perhaps in the next two years, OPPO will give us a satisfactory answer, and we also hope that OPPO can make a breakthrough in chip research and development and realize chip localization at an early date.