Vivo reveals V1 ISP: The company’s first imaging chip
Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
TL; DR
- Vivo has reportedly announced its first custom ISP.
- This chip will take over camera-related tasks in the upcoming Vivo X70 series.
- The company will offer an internal ISP together with Xiaomi.
Samsung and Huawei are currently two of the few Android players on the market that offer custom chipsets, but Xiaomi also tried their hand at the custom silicon game this year. Instead of offering a full-fledged chipset, Xiaomi brought an in-house image signal processor (ISP) into the Mi Mix Fold to handle camera-related tasks.
Now it looks like Vivo is the newest manufacturer to take this route as it appears that they will soon be offering a custom imaging chip. Vivo Executive Vice President Hu Baishan reportedly confirmed the V1-ISP at a conference today (h / t: ITHome), adding that it would debut in the X70 series next month.
There’s no word on what exactly the V1 ISP will be capable of, but the Mi Mix Fold’s Surge C1 silicon gives us a good idea of what to expect. According to Xiaomi, the custom chip enables improved image quality in low light conditions, better focusing, as well as improved automatic exposure and automatic white balance. So it stands to reason that Vivo’s ISP will offer some of these upgrades.
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We also saw that Huawei and Samsung’s custom chipsets enable camera features like advanced noise reduction, smoother zooming, and up to six cameras. In fact, Samsung’s Exynos chipsets offered 4K / 60fps and 8K video capabilities ahead of Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon processors. However, it is unclear whether Vivo could get such video upgrades through the ISP alone.
We’ll have to wait for the Vivo X70 series next month to see what exactly the company does with the V1 ISP. Anyway, it definitely looks like custom ISPs may be the new hot thing in smartphone hardware.
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