I remember this, very cool. His team at Google is really at the forefront of computational photography (HDR+, Halide, lightfield photography). Kari Pulli from Nokia also did some very cool stuff on array cameras/computational photography at Light since then.
I think it would actually make sense to build an open source camera on Android. The android camera HAL and camera2 APIs are pretty good (though limited). You get all the UI stuff for free, and a large dev ecosystem. Halide is great for very fast processing. We used them both for the Ubuntu Touch camera app. Though if you really want to push what's possible, access the more low level features would need to be open source too.
Nokia (or HMD Global) are back in the camera phone game again btw - 5 lens android camera coming out this year according to rumours. I think this type of multi-sensor camera really is the way forward on mobile phones. You can keep the lenses thin with much larger sensor size when combined. I really wish they would open source at least some parts of it, but unlikely
I think it would actually make sense to build an open source camera on Android. The android camera HAL and camera2 APIs are pretty good (though limited). You get all the UI stuff for free, and a large dev ecosystem. Halide is great for very fast processing. We used them both for the Ubuntu Touch camera app. Though if you really want to push what's possible, access the more low level features would need to be open source too.
Nokia (or HMD Global) are back in the camera phone game again btw - 5 lens android camera coming out this year according to rumours. I think this type of multi-sensor camera really is the way forward on mobile phones. You can keep the lenses thin with much larger sensor size when combined. I really wish they would open source at least some parts of it, but unlikely