The hardware in smartphone cameras has gotten incredibly good. We're seeing phones launch with crazy high megapixel counts, "SuperZoom" abilities, macro lenses, wide-angle lenses, and much more. What has become even more important that hardware, however, is camera software. Qualcomm announced that they are partnering with Imint to optimize its video enhancement tech for the Snapdragon 865.

Imint is a Swedish company that produces video software used by several smartphone brands, including Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, OnePlus, and others. We wrote about Imint and its new Vidhance Selfie Mode software last month. The Selfie Mode technology uses AI and facial recognition to continuously track the user’s face and subtly reposition it within the frame. This is similar to Google Duo's Auto-Framing feature.

The folks at Imint worked with Qualcomm to optimize the Vidhance Selfie Mode technology for the Snapdragon 865. They're using Qualcomm's Spectra 480 ISP's AI-based facial recognition for the face tracking and repositioning. This is Qualcomm's first ISP to employ machine learning to improve facial recognition accuracy.

The Selfie Mode technology is part of Imint's Vidhance suite of video enhancement products. The company is working with Qualcomm to upgrade some of the other products as well, such as Vidhance Super Stabilization, Vidhance Multi-Camera Transition, and Vidhance Dynamic Motion Blur Reduction. The hope is for these solutions to use less power when running on Snapdragon devices.

One thing to note about this partnership is the video technology is not part of the Snapdragon platform. This means you won't see these features come standard on any device with the Snapdragon 865. OEMs have to license the technology to use it on their devices.