Linear Technology, a Milpitas, Calif. company that develops integrated circuits, today announced it has developed a Xenon strobe technology for providing flash capabilities to camera phones. The press release says:
"The light output from Xenon flashes is hundreds of times that of point source LEDs, resulting in intense, easily diffused light over a wide area. The flash is many times faster than LEDs, stopping motion and preventing blur."In addition, since these new Xenon flash lamps operate at a color temperature close to that of natural light, they do not require the color correction necessitated by the blue peaked output from
white LEDs. The result of this improved flash technology is a practical, easy to implement solution for high quality photo-enabled phones."Such cameras deliver high quality photos up to several meters from the subject, rather than the current one to three feet limitation of LED-based camera phones."
The road to better photos
One of the main problems with camera phones is the lack of a strong flash. Today's so-called "flash" capabilities use LEDs that offer very low illumination.
A flash can't be too powerful because it would drain the battery too fast. Also, it can't be too large to fit into a handset.
If Linear Technology has developed a cost-effective flash that provides significantly more illumination without draining the battery or resulting in a large flash module, this indeed is good news.
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