It does similar things, and in fact I could believe it if the Google app was just a dumbed down version of the functionality intended to be usable by a wider audience.
MOST DoF and bokeh effects in photography can't be replicated with a single small camera.
As a photographer, bokeh is surprisingly difficult to fake, and looks glaringly bad when you notice. The blur effect is due to focal distance ratio differences, and it's very difficult to determine the distance in software. Hell, it's hard to determine it with 2 lenses, as the HTC implementation does.
If you want to compare what "fake bokeh" looks like compared to real stuff, you can look at http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/htc-one-m8-camera-vs-... for a review of the HTC One M8, which has a 2-lens setup.
Look at this picture, for example: http://static.trustedreviews.com/94/00002b836/8517/blue-htc-... For most software, it's extremely difficult, even with distance data, to separate the bush in the back from the blue toy. As a result... messy looking blur.
I can say that, as a non-professional photographer, picking up a prime lens and using that for the family shots has been an extremely eye opening experience. To the point that I actually dislike most photos from point and shoots.
There is definitely a bit of "quit caring about aperture." And I can't argue against progress in making the phone cameras better. I'm just not seeing compelling evidence to ditch my DSLR.
I do agree the zoom/distancing on the "foliage" photos are unfortunate for comparison -- but the fluffy animals more than make up for it IMNHO.
But given that jpeg is good enough for most people I'm sure these types of tools are too.
Edit: below mentions the HTC "double camera" phones, and in fact it's also possible to create synthetic aperture photography with multiple cameras instead of moving a single camera to multiple positions. Then you have the added advantage of not needing to assume a static scene! But a single-camera algorithm is great for rolling out to the common devices most of us have in our pockets.
Marc Levoy's SynthCam used a circular wiping motion, and attempted to "paint" the 3d space occupied by your theoretical processed aperture.
This Google Camera only requires a single linear move, and processes the rest!
One early technique was to take video form a mounted camera moving horizontally on weals looking 90 degrees to the side from the direction of travel (think looking out the side car window).
Now if you take that sequence of video frames and stack them one after the other like a deck of cards to create a 3d volume. Then you look down on that volume, what you will see are lines of color moving diagonally. Top left to bottom right, or the other way depending on your direction of travel.
These are the image features as they trace there way across the video over time. Things that are close move quickly so have a shallow diagonal. Things that are further away move slowly and have a much steeper diagonal.
Assign a depth to slope, done! Who needs LiDAR.
Is there any simple literature that covers this domain? Like a book of algorithms for computer vision, or something?
However, one of the most recommended books on the subject is available online, so you might want to check that out.
Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications by Richard Szeliski
re: your first comment... I'm reminded of a lot of the wikipedia pages on mathematical concepts. Sometimes I have to laugh, because they seem so high-level that only someone who already understood the domain could understand them.
Around 1 second. You only have to move the phone a tiny bit (maybe 3cm)
Now to get smartphones to do it is perhaps harder than running out to the store and getting a camera, but I would characterize this as one of those evolutionary rather than revolutionary improvements.
In terms of digitizing, there's this archaic thing called a scanner, but a lightbox/DSLR rig can do it, but with the rise of full frame/narrow/mirrorless bodies from Fuji and Sony, you might not even need to do that anymore...
In 2008, I had no trouble taking shallow-depth-of-field photos with a dirt-cheap Canon A570 pocket camera. For example:
https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2069/2076688334_aeae12583b_b....
Depth of field increases as the focus point moves deeper into the frame.
Depth of field decreases as your lens length increases.
Depth of field decreases as your sensor size increases.
The A570 will have a relatively large sensor compared to a mobile phone, and your subject was very close to the lens. These things considered, the depth of field isn't impressively shallow. Reducing the sensor size to that of a phone and moving the subject further away will make shallow depth of field impossible. The portrait examples on that Google page are exactly the sort of thing that wouldn't have been possible previously.
Up until now, a decently shallow depth of field was pretty much only achievable in DSLR cameras (and compacts with sufficiently large sensor sizes, which typically cost as much as a DSLR). You can simulate it in Photoshop, but generally it takes a lot of work and the results aren't great. The "shallow depth of field" effect was one of the primary reasons why I bought a DSLR. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, quality of the lens and sensor are important too.) Being able to achieve a passable blur effect, even if it's imperfect, on a cellphone camera is really pretty awesome, considering the convenience factor. And if you wanted to be able to change the focus after you take the picture, you had to get a Lytro light field camera -- again, as expensive as a DSLR, but with a more limited feature set.
Regarding Google's specific implementation ...
I've got a Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom, which hasn't yet gotten the Android 4.4 update, so I can't use the app itself to evaluate the Lens Blur feature, but based on the examples in the blog post, it's pretty good. It's clearly not indistinguishable from optical shallow depth of field, but it's not so bad that it's glaring. That you can adjust the focus after you shoot is icing on the cake, but tremendously delicious icing. The S4 Zoom is a really terrific point-and-shoot that happens to have a phone, so I'm excited to try it out. Even if I can use it in just 50% of the cases where I now lean on my DLSR, it'll save me from having to lug a bulky camera around AND be easier to share over wifi/data.