This is a nice improvement to mechanical focus in smartphones (using MEMS to move the focal plane rather than a magnet/coil).
But the comparison to Lytro is bogus on a technical level. What they mean is that the focus motor moves so fast that you can just take several pictures in a fraction of a second with a different focus setting for each and then throw away the ones that aren’t in focus.
Lytro on the other hand is a completely different technology that captures the whole light field instead of using a focusing element. Then it uses software post-processing to turn the light field into a 2-D image.
So, yes, both let you pick your focus after capture, but an apt analogy would be doing the Matrix bullet-time effect via several cameras vs. rendering a 3-D virtual model — they’re really not the same thing.
Originally shared by Abraham Williams