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The first two smartphones with built-in fully spherical 360 cameras

Here are the world’s first two smartphones with built-in fully spherical 360 cameras.

The phones are both manufactured by a company called Protruly, which creates products for cars, homes, and mobile.  One is called Darling VR Extreme and the other is called Darling VR Elite.


Darling Extreme

Darling Elite

Here are their features for their 360 cameras:
– fully spherical 360 degrees
– 210-degree hemispherical mode
– f/2 aperture
– two 13mp sensors
– 26mp photo resolution
– in-camera stitching
– realtime preview
– ultra-thin 23.8mm lens module
– vertical orientation correction
It is remarkable that Protruly was able to fit a spherical camera in a 23.8mm lens module — approximately the same width as the Theta S (which is 22.9 mm thick), which could mean that, like the Theta, these phones are capable of good quality stitching.

In addition to having lenses for 360 photos, each phone has an 8mp rear camera (with Sony IMX258 sensor and f/2.4 aperture) for non-360 photos.

The video resolution is supposedly 1080p, although I am not sure if that refers to the non-360 camera or the 360 camera, or both.

Here are the phones’ other specifications:

– 5.5-inch AMOLED screen
– aircraft-grade metal
– Helio X20 10-core processor
– 4GB RAM
– 64GB memory with up to 128GB removable Micro SD
– 3560 mAh Lithium polymer battery that can charge to 50% capacity in 30 minutes

The Extreme is 8800 yuan (US$1,271.59), while the Elite is 3980 yuan (US$575).  I’m not sure what is the technical difference between the two phones insofar as specifications are concerned.  Both will be available on November 30.  
Thank you to Pepe Vazquez for bringing this to my attention!
Update: the Extreme will supposedly have real diamonds embedded in it which is probably why it’s more expensive.  Thanks to Jim Jensen of the Google+ Photo Sphere community for this additional info!

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Mic Ty

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    • Hi gadgeti5. The brand is Protruly. The phones are Darling and Darling Extreme. The Darling Extreme is a luxury model with diamonds embedded in it. It is available from some vendors on Alibaba.

      Best regards,
      Mic