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Your next-gen smartphone camera packs 3D heat (hands-on)

Some seriously smart camera features are landing on your smartphone camera soon. CNET tours you around what's coming down the pike.

Jessica Dolcourt Senior Director, Commerce & Content Operations
Jessica Dolcourt is a passionate content strategist and veteran leader of CNET coverage. As Senior Director of Commerce & Content Operations, she leads a number of teams, including Commerce, How-To and Performance Optimization. Her CNET career began in 2006, testing desktop and mobile software for Download.com and CNET, including the first iPhone and Android apps and operating systems. She continued to review, report on and write a wide range of commentary and analysis on all things phones, with an emphasis on iPhone and Samsung. Jessica was one of the first people in the world to test, review and report on foldable phones and 5G wireless speeds. Jessica began leading CNET's How-To section for tips and FAQs in 2019, guiding coverage of topics ranging from personal finance to phones and home. She holds an MA with Distinction from the University of Warwick (UK).
Expertise Content strategy, team leadership, audience engagement, iPhone, Samsung, Android, iOS, tips and FAQs.
Jessica Dolcourt

Watch this: I, 3D camera robot

Room 229B may not sound like much, unless you go by its other name: the Robot Room.

Behind a beige door in Qualcomm's camera and imaging lab in San Diego, Calif., the robot in question sweeps its articulated mechanical arm in a surprisingly fluid ballet. Clamped in its metal fist, a smartphone takes in the measured movements.

This was just one scene of a workshop pocketed with testing environments while engineers puzzle out and perfect features that will one day make it onto phones and tablets.

In one area, the team of engineering vice president Serafin Diaz has built a cozy living room, a space meant for 3D scanning rather than for taking a load off. In another part of the lab, heavy-duty tool boxes stacked on top of one another line the hallway to a testing space that promises to make your device camera and gallery a lot smarter.

CNET got close-up with neat imaging tricks from two in-development platforms: Blur and Zeroth. Join us on this tour in the gallery and videos here.

Before new camera tricks land on phones, they start here (pictures)

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