Recent recruitment maneuvers at GoPro suggest that the camera manufacturer is really stepping up preparation for the release of the GoPro Hero 5. This flagship action camera will be the first released by the company since the GoPro Hero 4 black and silver went on sale back in fall 2014. GoPro has instead focused recent attention on mid-range cameras, which seemed a sensible market decision in many ways for the corporation in 2015.
Yet things didn’t work out as GoPro anticipated, and in many ways the last 12 months have been a financial challenge for the company. The share price of GoPro has plummeted significantly, and this has ensured that GoPro Hero 5 is ultimately the most important action camera release in the history of the corporation.
Coster on board
As GoPro prepares itself for this critical product, it is notable that the corporation has recently hired Danny Coster; a prominent member of Apple’s industrial design team. Successfully poaching a member of Apple’s staff will be a massive plus point for the action camera manufacturer, and can be viewed as something of a statement of intent.
Coster has worked for Apple since the 1990s, and has played a significant role in the development of such significant and iconic Apple projects as the original iPhone. The decision to recruit Coster was perhaps considered somewhat surprising, as there have been tensions and overlap between GoPro and Apple previously.
So how can GoPro get people back on side with the GoPro Hero 5? Here is a wish list of features and specifications that GoPro could include in the action camera.
GoPro Hero 5 Size
Size is everything with action cameras, and thus the reports emanating from GoPro that the corporation will produce a smaller and lighter GoPro Hero 5 must be welcomed. It is clear that the company is taking great care to perfect everything related to the GoPro Hero 5, as the release of this actually camera has already been delayed significantly.
One of the biggest challenges could be producing a smaller, sleeker, and at the same time more powerful unit, and this suggests that GoPro is indeed paying significant attention to this aspect of the action camera.
Drones
It is fascinating that GoPro has decided to go into the field of drones recently, and thus it is expected that compatibility with these drone products will be a central part of the make-up of the GoPro Hero 5. There is no doubt whatsoever that autonomous drones remain a controversial aspect of technology for numerous reasons, but this hasn’t prevented them from becoming a significantly profitable niche.
Thus, it is expected that GoPro will deliver a completely autonomous drone, which requires no piloting, in the near future, and murmurings from close to the company have suggested that the GoPro Hero 5 will tie-in with this new product in some way.
Waterproof
Another critical aspect of action cameras is that they deliver flexible packages that can ultimately be all things to all people. With this in mind, it is expected that GoPro will significantly improve the waterproofing features of the GoPro Hero 5, with the intention of making the product more attractive to divers in particular.
This is all very well and good in principle, but what can GoPro deliver in reality? Well, the figures linked with the GoPro Hero 5 are certainly impressive, with the suggestion that it will deliver underwater shooting at a depth of 60 meters. This would be three times the depth that the existing GoPro Hero 4 is capable of, and would enable the corporation to attract keen amateur divers as well as the professional marketplace.
8K resolution
It is currently an interesting time for the audio-visual aspect of technology, as 4K resolution is now becoming mainstream. What this effectively means is that the technology industry needs to craft a new aspirational visual product to exist alongside what will increasingly become the industry standard 4K.
It is widely anticipated that 8K resolution will indeed be this product, with some 8K products already available on the market. Effectively, 8K resolution is now becoming a niche product that particularly appeals to those who are passionate about technology.
With this in mind, it is anticipated that the GoPro Hero 5 will be able to shoot video in 8K resolution format. This will certainly be a niche aspect of the camera at first, but GoPro is seemingly building this into the makeup of its action camera in order to future-proof it.
60 fps
Another upgrade to the visual capabilities of the GoPro Hero 5 is that the action camera will be capable of shooting videos at 60 frames per second across multiple resolutions. Consumers would love to see 4K resolution being included in the 60 frames per second capability, but whether or not this will turn out to be practical is debatable.
Dual-lens technology
Numerous technology manufacturers are now implementing dual-lens technology within their products, and GoPro is expected to follow suit when the GoPro Hero 5 is released.
Battery life
GoPro will also massively improve the battery life of the GoPro Hero 5 in comparison to previous iterations of the series, with 24 hours on a single charge being particularly linked with the camera.
Connectable
Comments from the founder and CEO of GoPro, Nick Woodman, have already indicated that the GoPro Hero 5 will be particularly connectable.
“GoPro as we have known it today has resonated with our core customer, who wants the solution so badly that they are willing to deal with the inconvenience of manually offloading and accessing and editing their content. But we are self-aware and we’re willing to acknowledge that experience is too difficult for the mass market consumer, today.”
Quite what that this will entail we do not know at the time of writing, but it seems that the action camera will be much more strongly linked to the sort of video-sharing social media has become so popular than previous releases.
