Slashdot Mirror
Samsung Producing 5 Megapixel Camera Phone
Shippy writes "Straight from Yahoo News on the other side of the pond comes a story about Samsung's latest creation: a five-megapixel camera phone. This is pretty cool considering it's a pretty big jump from the camera phones that are currently available (many max out around 1.5 megapixels). It's expected to be available by the end of the year, but only in South Korea. I doubt it'll take long for a domestic carrier to pick up on this hot new toy." Other readers submitted a closeup picture and the company press release.
...has a charge-coupled device camera and high-sensitivity flash which allow users to take high-quality pictures. It can also function as a camcorder.
One of the biggest problems of camera phones is poor flash (if the phone has one AT ALL).
Until phone manufacturers make phones with a good quality Xenon strobe flash, 5 MP still doesn't mean anything if the lighting conditions stink. (See this month's issue of PC World for a little blurb on possible developments of Xenon strobe flashes in camera phones.)
That's starting to look more like a camera with a phone builtin than the other way around. It looks rather big. And it's not really a pretty design either.
Did anyone notice that the phone uses cdma2000. Carriers such as Verizon, Sprint and US Cellular use CDMA so this phone will work in the US. But the last time I tried to hookup a privately owned CDMA phone with Sprint and US Cellular they refused stating that if it didn't have their company name on the phone then they would activate it. I would hat to spend probably a grand (couldn't find the price) on the phone and not be able to use it. Then again, I don't know which is worse, I would hate going with a mobile phone carrier that wouldn't allow me to activate it.
The definition of megapixel is slippery. Sometimes these companies allow for interpolation for some reason (they are liars!). Some camera, such as the Foveon, only have 3.1 megapixels but behave like a much higher megapixel camera. This one I can't tell about what is the reality.
You can get the pictures off the damn thing.
I recently got myself a Motorola v220. Got a cute little 640x480 camera on it. Only problem is the only way to get the photos from the phone to my computer [or any other storage] is to either buy the 70$ software from motorola [that should have come with the phone] and run windows [something else I don't do] or pay 5 cents per kilobyte to email myself the picture.
So 5M pixel camera is likely to make "slightly larger" files. If I want to pay a couple of bucks to get each photo off the camera this might be a good idea.
Best thing they can do is make the thing act like a usb-disk to get maximum portability.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
...I doubt it'll take long for a domestic carrier to pick up on this hot new toy
Uhhh....where have you been for say, the entire history of the wireless world? Japan and South Korea have consistantly been about two years ahead of the US in this technology. The blame almost surely rests on the shoulders of the carriers, with about 25% of that being the consumers fault. Why would Motorola spend big dollars licensing that tech when consumers are still perfectly happy shelling out $300 for phones with 0.3MP camera's in them? The same argument applies to the rest of the market.
We, the consumers are locked into a rut where we don't quite have the money to start pushing the 6 month product cycle. Until we start upgrading our phone everytime a new model comes out, the carriers are still going to maintain high prices with slow product upgrades. Right now the mentality is that the average cell user signs a year contract and then never upgrades the phone during that year. With no drive to upgrade, there is no drive to innovate. With no innovation, there is no competition. With no competition, prices will stay rediculously high. And we, the consumer, will keep paying $300 for 2 year old technology.
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
Everyone looks at the number of megapixels, while almost no one ever thinks about the optics. Even if they cram a billion megapixels into that thing, the pictures won't be very good if they're using a tiny little fixed focus lens. Even more so given the likely quality of that lens.
"Quality like a top-end digital camera", indeed.
There is a problem with everyone having cameras at all times (on their phones): everything, EVERYTHING becomes a photo moment, with the requisite posing, commentary, and "destruction" of the real connection with whatever you were trying to experience.
Everywhere I go (here in Tokyo), everyone takes pictures of everything, all the time. This turns a simple lunch, night out with drinks, or my wedding party into an extended photo shoot, with everyone taking turns shooting a group photo with their mobile phone/camera. It never occurs to anyone there is this thing called the Internet through which they could share one nice picture among else. *sigh*.
5M pixel cameras will only worsen this problem-- all of those people who (before) only took quick stupid shots because they knew the quality was poor will (now) switch to shooting entire photo albums from the minutae of their sardine-packed train commutes.
There are phones here with TVs in them, but my favorite is the karaoke phone
davejenkins.com |
A high pixel count is great, but if you want a good picture, you need good optics.
Although somewhat redundant of the first reply I think that it will always be a Camera Phone, because people are going to use it more as a phone than a camera and therefore the phone functionality will always been more important. I am a big believer in devices doing one thing and doing it well. If it can do other things well, then do them, but don't half ass it. Digital camera technology isn't quite to the state where you can shove it into a phone and have it be good, the miniturization isn't quite there yet. In two or three years I think that phones and cameras will essentially be one device because both functions are best if mobile, who wants to take pictures of their living room?
The rush to higher density CCD's is insane.. but it's an easy number people seem to be able to understand. The optical lenses used are often much more important once you go beyond a certain threshold, e.g. 3-4MP. What's next, a 8MP camera phone? Why?
Camera phones have a limited ability to hold focusing and zoom lenses, and the sooner people understand this the better.
..don't panic
The end of the article says this:
"South Korea's top mobile carrier, SK Telecom, said it would introduce 10-megapixel camera phones produced by Samsung by the end of this year." If this isn't a mistake then this is quite a staggering rate of change in camera phones.
Tell me - if you put a black panel against white wall and snap it in the focus - how many _pixels_ would the border be? 10? 20? 100?
BTW - the simple rule is that you need only 1 MP per 10 sq.in. of print for _critically_ sharp images, i.e. those that best of modern printing equipment can realistically produce. For printing in your photolab (moreso inkjet) you can divide that by 4 safely. The question is that all those MPs from the camera are somewhat fake, see above.
PS: What's the matrix size of that phone, anyway?
Adding a 5mp camera to a telephone has been done mainly for marketing reasons. People who don't know anything will see the bigger number and think that it's better. The problem is, you need VERY decent optics to take advantage of a sensor with a 5 megapixel resolution. The TINY lenses that you will *always* get in a camera phone (unless you want your phone to be the size of a brick) will never be able to do justice to a 5mp CCD. Apart from anything else, a lens that's only a few millimeters across cannot gather enough light to let the camera expose the picture for a short enough time for it to still be sharp at that resolution. What I'm trying to say is, your pictures will have camera shake nearly all the time - even when a normal camera with a decent lens wouldn't have even used it's flash.
Basically - don't bother spending money to get a phone with 5mp instead of 1mp. 1mp is fine for instant snaps to put on your blog, but you're never going to want to print out your holiday-of-a-lifetime photos taken on a telephone with a 5mp camera coupled with a 3mm plastic (or glass if you're lucky) lens. Especially if said lens has been in your sweaty pocket for a few months and smashed against the tarmac a few times!
If you want decent photos, get a decent camera with a decent zoom lens.
Don't try and take photos you want to print out with your telephone! That's NOT what telephones are for - contrary to popular media hype.
I recommend http://www.dpreview.com/ for reviews of digital cameras.
If I had a 5-megapixel camera-phone, there'd be two things I'd worry about: 1. Vibration- It always seems I can't keep my hands still when I photograph, and I can't imagine using a monopod or even a tripid with a cellphone. 2. Flash- It always takes a lot of battery, so I can't imagine the life would be very long. 3. Zoom- You're not going to have a very good zoom on something fitting in your pocket. Of course, with a camera phone you're not trying to take good pictures, just those spur of the moment ones before I get the good one out.