Pictures taken on camera phones tend to be very much "spur of the moment" events. The consumer does not want the scene to be posed, and to have to take the time and trouble to place themselves and the camera a suitable distance from the subject. By virtue of its small optics, a conventional camera module is only able to focus on objects a limited range of distance from the camera, typically 60cm to tens of meters. By failing to know and respect this limitation the consumer is frequently disappointed with the resulting pictures. The image enhancement solution for this is "extended field depth." It results in all details in a scene being in focus, provided they are between 10cm and infinity from the camera module. Like the software-enhanced lens zoom solution, this is accomplished through the combination of a special lens providing controlled optical manipulation and a small algorithm. It involves no moving parts and is therefore rugged, reliable, instantaneous, and consumes virtually no power.

In a conventional camera module, the optical train is designed to focus a point source of light, placed a fixed distance from the camera, onto the imager. If the lens is out of focus, or the object is too close to the camera, then the spot is smeared over a diffuse area and the image is blurred. The rule whereby the lens transforms the point source into the blurred spot is described by a mathematical transformation called the point spread function. If the point spread function of a lens is known, the blur can be transformed back to a spot, using digital signal processing. But there is no reliable way of identifying whether a particular area in an image is in or out of focus and therefore whether the transformation should be applied. Software-enhanced optics solves this problem by intentionally de-focusing the entire image in a controlled manner. Effectively the lens creates a uniformly blurred image of a point source located anywhere in the field, from near to far, that can be de-convolved by a straightforward algorithm. The result is a nice, sharp image in which the foreground, middle-distance and background are simultaneously in focus.

One of the principal complaints about camera phones is their low-light performance. This is only a half-truth. Miniaturization of camera modules has certainly resulted in a decline in optical sensitivity compared with digital still cameras, owing to shrinking pixel dimensions. Decreasing the pixel size from 2.2μm in 2007 to 1.75μm in 2008, 1.4μm in 2009 with a road map out to 1.1μm has significant implications for low-light performance and image quality. Simply put, as pixel size shrinks, its sensitivity decreases. From a more technical perspective, the ability of the photo-diode to absorb photons and release electrons (expressed as quantum efficiency) significantly decreases as pixels shrink. Other consequential effects of small pixels include low dynamic range and degraded signal-to-noise ratio. In reality, the perception of poor low-light performance of camera phones is actually more due to the social trend of taking camera phone photographs in low-light environments; typically in the evening and in venues like clubs and restaurants where there can be 5lux or less illumination compared with >350lux outdoors in daylight. As luminance levels decrease, the picture quality from a digital imager deteriorates rapidly, revealing defects like increased noise, loss of detail and color errors.

One of the main reasons for the inadequate low-light performance of camera phones is the inability to alter the F-number of the optical train because this is fixed during manufacture. Most digital still cameras provide the option to increase the aperture size to compensate for the reduced number of photons that actually reach the imager from a dim scene. But a mechanically adjustable aperture is physically quite large, fragile, slow to respond and power hungry. Simply decreasing the F-number of a fixed aperture camera to boost the low-light sensitivity is not an option since a large aperture reduces the field depth, making it difficult to obtain a good quality image where the scene has depth. Typically, standard camera phones use an aperture size from F/2.8 down to F/2.4, mainly to preserve adequate depth of focus under normal luminance conditions. An easy fix for image capture in low light is to increase the exposure time. However, this renders the picture susceptible to motion blur and camera shake, and may not be possible for video capture where exposure time is limited to 67mS by the frame rate.

"Speed" is a convenient shorthand way to describe the ability of an optics system to deliver light to an imager. Operation in good light conditions can be done with a "slow lens." That is, the optics permits the use of a small aperture combined with a slow shutter to get good depth of field. Photography in poor light, or in good light where fast shutter speed is required, such as following certain sports, requires a "fast lens." Thus, the challenge is to sever the normal connection between lighting conditions, depth of focus and shutter speed, and develop a fast lens suitable for low-light scenes.