Google Confirms RAW Photos And Burst Mode Support Is Coming To Android Camera App

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Google is constantly working to improve and update its Android ecosystem, and with photography now quite a big deal in mobile space, it looks as though shot-taking ability is about to be stepped up a gear or two. According to Google spokeswoman Gina Scigliano, the Android team is working on a new photo API that will allow wannabe photographers to shoot RAW uncompressed images. On top of that, Scigliano, who was speaking with CNET, also added that the revamped API will offer native burst mode, helping to push smartphone point-and-shoot towards the territory of pro photography.

With cameras continuing to improve across the smartphone spectrum, it’s important that the software continues to hold its own and provide more options to OEMs. It has already been revealed that Samsung plans to step its camera game up next year with the Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Note 4 handsets, and if both can take advantage of Google’s RAW image / burst-shoot modes, we could finally have a bunch of devices worthy of a place next to Nokia’s show-stopping Lumia 1020.

The new API is currently being developed, and will hopefully make its way to Android KitKat 4.4 in a future update. The latest and greatest version of Google’s mobile OS is currently limited to a select range of mostly high-end smartphones, but hopefully by the time the API is ready for prime time, the chocolatey edition will have reached a few more of the market’s most popular devices.

Offering a little more insight into the new API, Scigliano noted that “Android’s latest camera HAL (hardware abstraction layer) and framework supports raw and burst-mode photography. . . we will expose a developer API in a future release to expose more of the HAL functionality.”

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