The left/right comparison for HDR are pointless : they should show the same image with same contrast/exposure with the two techniques at 100% pixel. The difference between without HDR and with HDR should be less noise (otherwise if it's just about having more exposure in the darkest parts of the image, then a little bit of image processing can do the trick)
Hopefully the idea is that it looks at the scene, decides which exposures are needed to capture the DR (for example 1/100s ISO800 for the foreground and 1/200s at ISO100 for the background) and then quickly captures exactly those two exposures in rapid succession. Then the software would try to compensate movement between the frames and stack these exposures into one.
So long as it involves multiple pictures and the inputs (exposure params)are computed are taken done when the photo is captured, then it does things you can't do with image processing in any single image.
Yes you can, there are multiple inputs BUT the effect is about extending dynamic range only (not create an artistic effect between the inputs).
You can always extend numerically the DR of any set of values but you will stumble upon some noise eventually.. This HDR+ module is supposed to have less noise in the shadows OR have better sun effects / beautiful highlights (candles for example) / good looking clouds.
A good test would be shooting in strong direct sunlight and look at the shadows.
Right, the key "artistic" thing is identifying foreground/background, faces, interesting elements etc., and simply try to balance the exposure to create a pleasing end result. I have no idea what this thing does, or even if it uses multiple exposures (or even multiple cameras), but I was simply thinking that facial recognition/focus and automatic toning has been around for ages, it has to do something that requires fast decision (at trigger time) about exposure params.
I couldn't see whether that was done though, it could be done with most of the same effect by simply exposing e.g. +2EV and -2EV and simply deciding afterwards how to blend those images into a HDR given the image content (faces, ...)