The push of light into smartphones was inevitable. Sure, the startup has turned heads with its expensive L16 camera, but these days, mobile photography is almost exclusively the domain of the handset. At the beginning of last year, the answer came in the form of the Nokia 9 PureView inducing trypophobia.
In a category where manufacturers ran to add more cameras,the PureView had the most, with a five-hex array. It was new, innovative and for the most part it was overkill. At the very least, however, this gave Nokia / HMD bragging rights and managed to differentiate the handset into one of the most hotly contested corners of the smartphone hardware race.
But Light comes out of the smartphone game. In the end, the competition may have been too stiff for a small startup, especially with many manufacturers working on their own native hardware and software solutions.
Light confirmed this decision this week in an email to Android Authority, simply writing that it "no longer works in the smartphone industry." This is surprising news, given that mobile partnerships seemed to be the most logical route for the company, which raised $ 121 million in a round led by SoftBank in 2018. This Series D provided the total funding for the Palo Alto-based company up to more than $ 181 million.
More recently, it has also signed agreements with Sony and Xiaomi. It is unclear what this means for these partnerships in the future. We also don't know what life is like after smartphones for Light. We contacted the company for more information on their plans.
