As we all know, the latest version of the Android system is often designed to reflect new changes and new needs in some industries. It's just that this change and demand is sometimes not necessarily gratifying.
A few days ago, a new feature of the Android 13 developer preview was exposed, according to the information currently revealed, this new feature will allow users to "have a finer control over the LED fill light of the phone." Specifically, this is because the developer preview of Android 13 has been found to have added two new APIs (application programming interfaces), one of which can read the brightness level of the current LED fill light and inform the system, while the other allows the system to control the brightness of the LED fill light step by step.
At first glance, this feature does not seem to have much use, because it is well known that the brightness of the LED filllights on mobile phones today is not very high. Even in the case of real photography, the light intensity of the LED fill light lamp can already be regarded as very poor, and there is basically no need to suppress the need to reduce the brightness. Therefore, the function of "being able to freely adjust the brightness level of the mobile phone fill light" may be more like simply to enhance the experience of using the mobile phone as a "flashlight".
Some netizens analyzed the code and found that Android 13 added a lot of code related to flash control
But the problem is that throughout the industry, it is not difficult to find that although this function is extremely simple, it has been equipped with Apple and Samsung in their smartphone products as early as many years ago. In contrast, Google's new feature in Android 13 can even be regarded as a very "hindsight". So, why is that?
Obviously, this is not a technical issue. Because controlling the brightness of the phone fill light is too technically too simple, Google basically can't do it because it can't do it, so it dragged it to Android 13 to "officialize".
So the only possibility is that this seemingly insignificant change on Android 13 may actually represent a judgment of Google's design of today's mainstream smartphone products. That's the xenon flash that many photography enthusiasts once talk about, and may never appear on smartphones again.
Xenon flash was once a symbol of "high-end imaging models"
When it comes to xenon flash, friends who have experienced the Nokia Symbian era will feel more cordial, after all, in the mobile phone industry, Nokia can be said to be the biggest "enthusiast" of xenon flash. Previously, their models, from the mid-range 6000 series to the flagship N series, had many models that used xenon flashes instead of LED fill lights (note the difference in wording here), and even in the later Lumia WM period, some products using xenon flashes were still introduced.
So, what are the advantages and disadvantages of xenon flash? In simple terms, the biggest advantage of xenon flash is the word "bright". Borrowing from asus's introduction of a certain xenon flash peripheral in 2016, the brightness of xenon flash can reach 100 times the brightness of ordinary models led fill lights.
At the same time, compared with LED fill lights, the color temperature of xenon lamps based on the principle of high-voltage electric excitation is closer to the sunlight in nature, so it has a higher color rendering index. To put it more simply, the light filling effect of the xenon lamp is not easy to make the picture appear "dead white", but can illuminate the original color of the object. Because of this, for a long time before, the view that "mobile phones equipped with xenon flashes are the flagships of each image" once became the consensus of many players.
The shortcomings of all aspects make xenon lamps bid farewell to the mobile phone industry
Obviously, if you only look at the camera effect of the mobile phone, the xenon flash is much better than the LED fill light. However, as a light source technology that follows the traditional camera, xenon flash itself also has some huge shortcomings that cannot be overcome.
First of all, xenon flash is a high-voltage light source, and "high voltage" means that it requires a very high voltage to work, so whether in the camera or mobile phone, xenon lamp can not be directly powered by a battery. It will require an additional supercapacitor as a power supply unit, which is charged by the battery first, and then the capacitor will supply the bulb with ultra-high voltage power in an instant. In this way, the volume of the xenon lamp group is much larger than the LED light group. For today's slim smartphones, using a xenon flash has become an almost unimaginable design.
Secondly, the excitation characteristics of xenon flashes are destined to be instantaneous fill light that can only be used for taking pictures, and cannot be used as a continuous light source. This also means that on the one hand, the xenon flash cannot be used as a "flashlight" on the mobile phone, otherwise it is easy to cause damage; on the other hand, it cannot adapt to the continuous light filling needs of today's mobile phones for video shooting. Therefore, if mobile phone manufacturers want to use xenon flash on the main image equipment, they often have to be equipped with an additional set of LED fill lights, which will obviously cause an increase in cost.
LEDs are following in the footsteps of xenon lamps? This is not impossible
It is not difficult to find that excessive size, limited functions, and cost considerations are the main reasons why xenon flashes eventually faded out of the mobile phone industry. But in addition, if you pay attention to the smartphone imaging function in recent years, you will find that in fact, the status of LED filllights today is actually equally "precarious".
The low-light photography technology of modern flagship image phones does not need to rely on fill light at all
This is not surprising, after all, for the current model, a variety of technologies based on "multi-frame synthesis" and "AI noise reduction" have long become mainstream, and the low-light picture quality and perception they can present are far better than the effect after LED fill light in most cases. Even if you look at today's new machines, you will find that manufacturers often spend a lot of money to strengthen the image stabilization and AI computing power of the camera, but they may not necessarily equip the flagship image model with a set of LED fill lights.
Perhaps because of this, in Google's view, the role of LED filllights on mobile phones has long ceased to be image-based as the main purpose, and it may be its main role to be a "flashlight" with peace of mind. Perhaps based on this consideration, they will not start to enhance the "flashlight function" of LED fill lights from the code level until Android 13.
【The picture of this article comes from the network】