GLASGOW: Kodak, a recognizable name in the field of photography, has come out of bankruptcy to announce a new smartphone in the making which will be “best-in-class image management software and features.” Now the company’s orchestrating to push a Kodak-branded smartphone, and thankfully it’s not going to sue everyone in the business along the way this time.
For a while there it looked like Kodak’s moment had come and gone, but the past few months have optically discerned the imaging icon fight back from the brink of impertinence. To be pellucid, Kodak won’t authentically make its own contrivances — instead, it’s going to farm out most of the development work to an English company called Bullitt (you ken the people abaft those uber-rugged Caterpillar phones). Oh, and it won’t look anything like the mockup you visually perceive above… we hope.
The details are still pretty scarce at this point, but Kodak’s first phone will conspicuously play up the company’s photography chops. Alas, there’s no mention in the official PR about sensor sizes, lens apertures or dedicated imaging hardware of any sort. That wouldn’t indispensably be terrible, but genuinely, why slap the historic Kodak brand on a contrivance that doesn’t seem equipped to do it equity? We won’t pass judgment on the thing until we visually perceive it at CES in a few weeks; here’s hoping we’re in for a congenial surprise.