A New Phone Chip Helps You Take the Perfect Pet Pawtrait. I Tried It Out

In my iCloud there are 3,542 photos of my cat. Whether he's curled up like a cinnamon roll or basking in a sunbeam, he is constant perfection, but the photos I take of him are not all winners. Among my vast library of feline photos are many duplicates — a result of me snapping away until I get the perfect photo of him staring down the lens.

I know I'm not the only pet owner with this precise problem. Most of us don't have pets who are also professional models, and we therefore usually need several takes to get the perfect shot. But with the latest developments in camera technology, this might soon be a problem of the past.

At its Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, Qualcomm demonstrated how its latest mobile chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, will enable us to take the perfect shot of our pets with no duplicates needed. The updated neural processing unit (NPU) that sits on the chipset powers a variety of AI features, which can process information coming from multiple inputs and data sources simultaneously.

It's thanks to this technology that some phone cameras in the coming year will be able to track your pet and use autofocus to ensure the shutter blinks exactly when your beloved, dart-eyed pet is staring straight down the lens. Basically, instead of relying on you to react in the correct split second, the camera will do your work for you.

In a live demonstration featuring a beautiful (and beautifully soft) golden retriever called Remy, I also saw how burst mode could be used to capture an array of photos of Remy leaping to catch a tennis ball, with AI picking the best action shot for you.

And the work of the AI doesn't stop there. Once your phone has captured the money shot, Qualcomm's pet hair enhancement tool can pick out and better define the individual strands of your pet's fur, providing you with an even richer image to post to Instagram, print out for your wall or gaze at on your phone screen late at night when you're far away in Hawaii and missing the sensation of your cat curling up on your chest in the night. (Or is that just me?)

Since 2014, almost every smartphone camera has used AI to enhance photos whether you know it or not, says Durga Malladi, senior VP of technology planning at Qualcomm. “Whether it's lighting or image stabilization, computational photography took over every time you take a picture,” he says.

With every year that goes by, the AI photography features available on your phone gets better thanks to the power and speed of the chips within. Smarter pet photography is just one of the many options available from Qualcomm's suite of photography features for phone makers who choose to use the Snapdragon 8 Elite in their top-end devices this year.

We're excited to see which device makers choose to take advantage of this. The only bad news? The beautiful golden retriever will sadly not be included with your next smartphone purchase. But, there's surely no better time to head to your local pet shelter (here in Hawaii, that's Maui Humane Society) to adopt your very own furry friend — although remember that a dog is for life, not just for photos.