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"Remember the first time that you saw The Matrix? That moment when Neo and Agent Smith froze and the camera panned round 360 degrees was and still is, completely awesome. It left us wondering what we would do with access to our own form of &amp;#039;bullet time&amp;#039;. The majority of our ideas were wholly inappropriate, but some could be genuinely exciting alternatives to Keanu Reeves leather-based gymnastics. So when Qualcomm invited us to come and test out its own take on The Matrix - a camera rig made up of 130 HTC One smartphones capable of producing 540 degree &amp;#039;frozen in time&amp;#039; shots - we happily obliged.  When we were initially confronted with the rig, its capabilities weren&amp;#039;t what initially impressed us. Instead, it was seeing 130 HTC Ones lined up around what looked like a giant rollercoaster for mobile phones. It was quite a sight - and for Android fans, especially those who enjoy a bit of HTC action, a must see. The system works very much like the one in the movies. When it is triggered, each of the 130 HTC Ones will capture an image of that exact moment.  The trick lies in how the HTC Ones themselves are placed. Each phone lies on an undulating track that wraps 540 degrees around the central area where users are photographed. That undulation forms the varying camera angle that you see in movies like The Matrix and, of course, the &amp;#039;bullet-time&amp;#039; style images produced by Qualcomm&amp;#039;s camera rig.  When every picture is lined up and then played in order, you get a single sequence that shows one moment, frozen in time, but from a shot that wraps the whole way around the action. For the Qualcomm-powered Ones being used here, it&amp;#039;s an immense amount of information for the cameras and phones to deal with. All 130 photographs then have to be transported via one single router to a computer, which then pieces the sequence together and returns it, in GIF form, roughly two minutes later.  Our early attempts at creating something exciting using the Qualcomm rig involved little else than us jumping.  But as is always the case with any form of exciting camera related technology, breakdancing does best. Admittedly, the GIF you see here doesn&amp;#039;t really involve ourselves doing many backflips, but let us assure you, we did manage the odd headspin. Qualcomm just forgot to press the trigger at that moment, honest. In the end though, we were fairly pleased with our work. The rig took about two minutes to reset itself and only allowed you one press of the trigger in between, so whatever move you decided to pull would need to be timed extremely well. Being able to see and create a 540 degree wraparound GIF of us looking like an idiot on the dance floor has been a life-long aim. Obviously, we would have preferred to go all Keanu Reeves, pulling off some sort of bullet-dodging backflip, but that doesn&amp;#039;t look like it is going to happen any time soon.  The UltraPixel camera in the HTC One is roughly 4 megapixels, which means the images it takes aren&amp;#039;t absolutely huge in size.  As such, the systems involved with the camera rig aren&amp;#039;t totally overloaded with data. Obviously it&amp;#039;s an amazing thing that a simple mobile phone can put together such an impressive sequence. The issue lies in the fact that you do need 130 of the things in order to have a go yourself. However, HTC One owners enjoy an almost instant photo-response from the phone&amp;#039;s camera app, so you can capture a vast number of photographs quickly without the camera lagging up. As such, why not try some Wallace and Gromit-style stop motion, perhaps using Lego figures? Alternatively, you could always go out to the bank, pick up the roughly \u00A370,000 needed for your own 130 mobile phone-strong Matrix camera setup and give things a go yourself. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/smartphones/news/a527466/frozen-in-bullet-time-at-qualcomms-130-htc-one-slow-mo-camera-booth/>