Due to the fact that the Razer Phone is specifically designed to be used by gaming enthusiasts, its specs naturally lean towards trying to marry amazing processing speed with awesome graphics rendering capabilities, as evidenced by its 5.7 inch QHD IGZO IPS LCD (liquid crystal display) screen (featuring a refresh rate of 120 Hertz), Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC (system on a chip), 8 gigabytes of random access memory (RAM), and of course, the humongous 4,000 mAh battery. But that does not necessarily mean that the Razer Phone can’t have some fun with regards to its camera specs. Recently this week, the folks at Razer have decided to add a Portrait mode to the gamer phablet.
But first, some bit of background -- when the Razer Phone first made its debut about half a year ago, it came preinstalled with Google’s Android 7.1 Nougat mobile operating system. Last month, however, the company has since taken care of that by rolling out the Android 8.1 Oreo update. This deployment had brought fresh features, including full support for Project Treble. Just a few days later, Razer would unleash the kernel source code and factory images for the handset’s Android Oreo release.
And now we come to the latest update, which delivers the Portrait mode to the Razer Phone. For those not familiar with Portrait mode, it is a type of camera feature that allows mobile users to blur the background of images in order to put more emphasis on the photo’s subject (which is typically on the foreground). The popularity of twin camera set ups on high profile smartphone releases has paved the way for Portrait modes to become sort of given in any new major handset.
One can argue that as a smartphone made for gamers, the Razer Phone does not actually need a Portrait mode, but the camera effect’s presence does make for a nice improvement. The phablet already has a terrific telephoto lens, and the arrival of the new Portrait mode expands that lens’ capabilities.
Apart from the Portrait mode, the latest update to the Razer Phone also includes the May 2018 security update, fixes for bugs and various performance enhancements, and the updated Privacy Policy for General Data Protection.
For those who missed the news a few weeks back, January also saw Razer’s crew quietly add support for Netflix HDR to the Razer Phone, as well as Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 surround sound.
