Enhanced partnership with top smartphone brand leverages AI to ensure high-quality camera images

How often do you snap pictures without using your smartphone? Both professional photographers and amateurs are increasingly turning to their mobile devices to share visual narratives and capture special moments. For companies in the smartphone market, ensuring their devices produce top-notch images is now an essential element for success.

Recognising the importance of image quality, researchers at PolyU have created advanced Generative AI algorithms that can quickly convert blurry smartphone images into stunning high-resolution photos that appear lifelike to the human eye. This breakthrough innovation in smartphone imaging was achieved as a result of a three-year partnership with the Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Corp., Ltd. (OPPO), and has now been integrated into OPPO’s flagship smartphones.

Knowledge transfer success

Building on these remarkable results, PolyU and OPPO took their research collaboration to new heights by upgrading the existing PolyU-OPPO Joint Innovation Lab to the PolyU-OPPO Joint Innovation Research Centre in January 2025.

Mr Jason Liao, President of the OPPO Research Institute, reflected on the partnership’s achievements. “In the three years of collaboration between OPPO and PolyU, we witnessed significant technological breakthroughs and notable achievements in talent cultivation through the former Joint Lab,” he said.

OPPO is a leading global smart device brand with a footprint in more than 70 countries and regions, and over 40,000 dedicated employees. Supported by OPPO’s substantial commitment of at least RMB 30 million in funding over the next five years, the new Research Centre will adopt a more comprehensive and in-depth approach to AI-driven computational imaging research.

New direction to drive innovation

As demand for filming mobile video and creating multimedia content continues to grow, the new Research Centre will extend into more complex areas, such as video algorithms, album editing and lightweight Generative AI models. It aims to leverage AI technology for mobile devices while maintaining high-quality image output.

The enhanced partnership also expands the scale of co-training for PhD and postdoctoral researchers, who represent the next generation of AI talent. This demonstrates the impact of academia-industry collaboration in driving technological innovation. The new centre aims to recruit around 25 doctoral researchers and several postdoctoral candidates over a five-year period.

Emphasising the strategic nature of the collaboration, Professor Jin-Guang Teng, President of PolyU, noted that this latest development coincided with the launch of the Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences in January 2025.