It's hard to stop for a breather when you're running a technological marathon against your competitors. Qualcomm and Nokia, two big players in the smartphone game, have remained alert and active enough to invest in what is probably the future of smartphone cameras: the Pelican camera. Instead of a single lens, as the tradition has been thus far for phone cameras, the Pelican camera uses a Lytro-style array of sixteen microlenses.
Each of these mini lenses record data in a different color, and according to the manufacturer, the gaps in between them are what help them interpret depth of field in between objects in the photo. The result? You can snap away as many photographs as you like, then have the pleasure of focusing them after they're taken. This is illustrated nicely in the above video, complete with a clear explanation and lots of cheesy overacting. Who else hopes this means we can finally get some nice shallow depth of field for portraits...on our phone? Time will tell, friends.