The standard of the smartphone snapper has increased dramatically over the past couple of years, to the stage where many rely upon their handset as their sole source of still images and videos. While companies have worked around many design caveats to offer optimal photo and video-taking experience, some issues have proved more difficult to smooth out than others, and just like the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S III before it, it seems the LG-made Google Nexus 4 also suffers with the issue of purple haze.
For those unfamiliar, purple haze is – in a technological sense – exactly as described. Certain reflections and refractions of a smartphone’s camera lens or heavy load of the sensor cause a hazy, purplish-colored blemish to appear across a vast portion of an image, which all-but ruins the shot. The Galaxy S III’s camera, which, under tests, appears inferior to most other recently released, high-end smartphones, seems to suffer with the issue a great deal worse than others, but despite being very new to the market, the Nexus 4 has not escaped the plaguing issue.
The image below has been taken on a Nexus 4, and you can clearly notice the discolored nature of the shot. It’s not just a Nexus 4 problem – it is in fact one affecting the majority of the cameras on some of the higher-end smartphones – and if you wish to prevent these cloudy blotches from spoiling your Kodak moments, ensure you don’t take shots right in the face of a bright light.
Hopefully, it’s an issue that the likes of Apple, Google, HTC and LG can fix in the near future. Whilst the overall quality of cameras on smartphones wasn’t of particular significance some five or so years ago, now it’s almost essential, and with millions of images taken using the likes of the iPhone 5 and the Galaxy S III and shared on social networking sites like Facebook, none of the major smartphone makers will want this issue to escalate beyond the current product lineup.
The issue itself doesn’t crop up too often, and as stated earlier, if you avoid the heavy lighting conditions, you should be able to keep your images relatively purple haze-free.
