The final update of 3.0 will have the facial recognition feature similar to the one found on iPhoto.
Don't believe me now, but you'll see.
Don't believe me now, but you'll see.
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Facial recognition on iPhone 3.0
- Thread starter Nor*Cal
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You're right, I don't believe you. I wish there was a forum where we could sticky all threads like this and then concede to or burn the OP once we know, haha. That would be fun, a PREDICTIONS thread with a FALSE and ACCURATE outcome section.
There are different types of facial recognition.
There's the facial recognition the OP mentions, which recognizes a face and asks you "Is this Joe?" Which could be really cool for direct uploads to Facebook, Flickr, etc. This would also be cool if the new Photos app allowed smart folders, etc. which I think is a stretch. But imagine if the iPhone had a very usable camera the automatically tagged People and Places - that'd make a great tie-in to iPhoto.
Another type of facial recognition could be used by the camera application to recognize a face in the framed photo and adjust white balance, contrast, focus, etc. based on the face(s) being photographed. Of course that assumes the camera & camera app will have those capabilities. This would also be cool and may be less of a stretch.
Either way, it's a cool idea. I think that RIM, Microsoft, Palm and Apple have captured a very large percentage of the business users. The future of smartphone growth will be converting the flip-phone users to smartphone users. To this end, I think facial recognition would be one of those features that keep Apple at the top of the consumer/media smartphone world. Soon all phones will be deeply integrated with the most popular social sites. Apple's app store already helps cover much of that.
But - if iLife was put onto the cloud - the actual program accessible through a web page - then you could upload your pictures, and then the recognition could be done in the cloud, and then get back to you about who it is - and use your contact library for possibles for example.
We don't know exactly what the next step Apple's taking with SproutCore - it's coming up to 1.0, and it's coming up to being a year since MobileMe. They've had Coherent, and Cappucinno etc show that you can make some interesting apps from the concept.
Seeing as Apple already uploads to Facebook, and can sync tag data, why not? Apple could in effect tag your photos for you, and get others who've tagged you and friends you know, to improve the accuracy of the taggin and also facial recognition.
Apple had jo listings regarding sensors, auto-focus, white-balance etc, so it's not a stretch to say that optimisation of photographs and video, given the possible 3.2Mpixel sensor, will happen. Heck, if you can do motion detection with some CSS, html and js, Apple should be able ot have knocked up some cool web app style things.
you get a
seems right though as Apple already has this in iPhoto. natural progression of software thru platforms.
Absolutely, correct predictions will get some form of ribbon similar to those won in Macrumors contests.
The first thing you mention is true face recognition. This requires a relatively expensive (computationally) training phase for each individual you want to recognize. It's fine for a desktop app like iPhoto but probably too time and power hungry to be included as a standalone feature on the phone. It could work by syncing the already trained database from iPhoto, however.
The second thing you mention is technically face detection, not recognition. This doesn't require training on individual faces and can be done even on lightweight hardware (e.g. digital cameras), so it wouldn't be a stretch at all for it to be included on the phone. I haven't checked but I wouldn't be shocked if some App Store apps already do it.
Camera smile recognition is a great feature, especially if you have children, or take family photos. So is autofocus on a certain person, etc.
It seems to be becoming commonplace.
There are apps that do it. I don't remember the name, but I've seen at least one.
I'm certain Apple will build that in eventually. If not in 3.0 then in 4.0 for sure.
But yeah, recognition may take a few more years given the hardware limitations.
Why would you call a useful feature a gimmick? I think of 'gimmick' being used to describe useless features.
Years? Isn't the potential for a wi-fi connected/3G connected phone being able to send and receive results in near real time a distinct possibility within a months timeframe? From what Android has shown, being able to scan items, and received results back on them is possible. So why not other image recognition? You've got poster recognition from Nokia I think, you've got things like TinEye - the ability to grab a screen once the video sensor is on, and then send that up, process, and send back results surely isn't too far away at all.
- The phone doesn't hav eto have the software to recognise the face, or the data, just send a picture/pictures/frame from streaming video, and receive the results.
Take the rumored work on augmented reality that could now bolt on due to magentometers being incorporated - it would be taking a feed, working out where the user is by cardinal direction, GPS etc, then geotagging any picture, but also being able to overlay a video feed with other data (building names/3D building imagery, building information (contact information) etc. Once you start being able to recognise where you are from merely a picture alone (which I'm sure was being worked on at the last Google I/o or similar) then you've got another way to do this.Not too many buildings change to much to be able to start diong Enkin/Tonchidot kind of stuff.
Admittedly a tangent
I'd say a feature, coming at some point possibly, to who are both iLife 09 and mobileMe customers perhaps?