News & Reviews:   Lytro

The Lytro-like refocus ability first offered by the Nokia Lumia 1020 can no be enjoyed by other Lumia owners with the new Nokia Refocus app. Working like a camera app, it takes several photos using different depths of the same image. You can then choose to refocus on any spot in the picture, something which Nokia has made interactive. From our brief hands-on with the app, it works much like a filter, sharpening up the focus point and blurring out the other image depths for a very interesting Lytro camera-like effect. Bear in mind though, that if you take a blurred shot, the Nokia Refocus app won't be able to do much asides from sharpening an already blurry photo. You can easily focus back on everything, returning the photo back to normal as well as do a colour-popup as well. According to Nokia, the app is compatible with the Nokia Lumia 920, Lumia 925, Lumia 928, Lumia 1020 and Lumia 1520. The app can be downloaded at the Windows Phone store under the Nokia Collection.

Rehashing an old concept with new tech, Toshiba is coming out with dual camera modules which may soon offer smartphones the Lytro-like ability to refocus after the shot while maintaining sharp image clarity. The dual camera module uses two 5MP cameras that records both depth and image information at the same time, creating a 'deep focus' effect and a resulting 13MP image. The camera module works a lot like the Pelican Imaging camera array but unfortunately Toshiba have said that they expect it to reach mass production by April 2014, so we may only see smartphones with these Toshiba dual camera modules after that date. No exact Malaysia release dates or pricing just yet, but it could mean that next year's smartphones will have the same capabilities as the current batch of photo-binning cameraphones, like the Nokia Lumia 1020.