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7 Megapixel Camera Phone
Alex writes "It looks like LG Electronics are planning a 7 Megapixel Camera Phone which to me seems like overkill - but it must be making a few of those digital photography manufacturers pushing out point and shoot digicams a little nervous. Camera phones will never take over DSLRs or serious digital cameras but are we seeing what will be the death of the entry level point and shoot digicam?"
I think that alot of young people would opt for the camera phone, and therefore not spend the money on a point in shoot.....and a phone. But, I think that our older generation would most definently prefer the standard point and shoot camera seperate from their cell phone. I see it as a decreased market, but not a dead one.
My name is a variety of floral rose, and no, it's not blue
Hmm...they are already out there. What we need are ones with storage space for more than 30 seconds or so.
<whispers> there's real people out there, dude...</whispers>
The Mothership
What people don't realize is that the optics are just as important as the megapixel count. I'd take a two megapixel camera with a nikon lens over a 7 megapixel camera phone any day.
That exact same problem is happening over here in Japan. The way they are combating it is by having the devices make a sound when a picture or video is being taken. That way if your taking a picture of a school girl going up a escalator with a skirt or pictures at a book store "big brother" will know that you are doing it.
Havin' it large, livin' the life, Welcome to the land of the rising sun.
I know very little about digital cameras. I've never been much of a picture-taker, and the last camera I bought (a fairly nice, though entirely unprofessional, one) has sat in a closet for years, if I still even have it. I'd never buy a phone for the camera feature.
However, with the typical day-after-Thanksgiving sales tomorrow, one of the local superstores has HP's entry-level model, the Photosmart 435 3.1 megapixel, for less than $50. I'm going to pick one up. It's certainly not the best, but it's a camera, and it'll shoot 4x6's just fine.
The point is, I don't care about a feature, and I don't look for a phone that'll minimize the number of gadgets I have---especially since I don't even know if I'll use a digital camera. This won't be the beginning of the end of entry-level digital cameras, because the entry-level ones are the ones people get when they don't even know if they want one. This could be the end of gadget-lovers buying them. This could even be the end of the "high-end entry-level" position.
But some people will just want an entry-level camera, without paying for a cell phone.
Christian Jones
Medicine. Mathematics. Mediocrity.
7MP might sound like a lot, but I have a hard time believing that it would look as good as a 3 MP point and shoot.
Its the lens!
While your phone can get smaller and smaller and still function as a phone - not so with a camera. Bigger lenses have better optical quality and larger sensors give better detail. Further, if I can carelessly shove it into my pocket, its unlikely the lens will even stay clean.
I don't think we'll see the day when phones are compared based on image quality. (...but I'm not betting on that...)
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Because people are stupid and can't understand more than a single simple measure for a camera (or any other piece of technical equipment) the camera with the most megapixels wins. This is what sells these ridiculous camera phones despite the fact that you don't need more than 2 megapixels for an A4 print and most of these camera phone snaps won't be shown at higher than 320x240 res anyway.
Those phones have shitty lenses too, so the results are crap anyway. Sigh.
7 megapixels is only clear if their is a decent lens attached. Given that it's going to be on a cellphone...I'll stick with my 3 megapixel point and shoot, or my 6 megapixel DSLR.
"I smell regulation time!"
If people could excercise some self-control? You wouldn't be smelling anything.
Has anyone checked the current cell carrier-imposed limits on MMS messages? Last I heard it was something below 200KiB (and probably as little as 75KiB). Now, unless you're taking a picture of an evenly-lit solid white wall, there aren't many seven megapixel images I can think of that will crunch down into 200KiB.
So unless the cell carriers are going to allow the phone to hook directly up to a PC (fat chance; they can't bill for that), seven megapixels seems a trifle huge for a phone.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Really, the way people seem attached to their cellphones, I'm surprised Samsung isn't working on a way to hardwire the thing to someone's head. I really doubt if anyone would be able to take the phone away from their ear long enough to take a picture.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
It [video, sound in phones] is actually just a cultural foundation-laying for later projects. Cell phone companies know that portable videophones will sell, if purely for the Sci-Fi factor. "Normal" videophones, the ones pictured in SF, haven't (and won't) be adopted first for a simple reason: lack of an "hip, trendy" market. People won't buy a new desk-mounted phone because nobody requires they buy one to talk to them, and that's the only thing that pushes them to upgrade things. Cellphone users, however, are being gradually phased into the idea of a videophone with cameraphones, SMS messaging, and other such "alternate communication paradigms". Once they adopt it, and they will, as the cellphone companies will just drop it into their new phones that you're forced to upgrade to to use their service, desktop users will have a much more proven, and probably required (read: in use by one's boss) technology. Then we'll start to see the real effects of this technology; the "cell-posted video blog", the "900 number that won't date you", etc.
I mod down pathetic posts.
...a lot of it is about the lense.
For example, my 1 megapixel v710 looks like complete ass. Its photos are dark and worst of all very, VERY grainy.
DigiCams still have another 3-5 years left in'em.
When you are putting a tiny, sub-optimal lens in front of a CCD the size of your fingernail, then trying to fix 7,000,000 pixels on it, your image is *going* to look like crap. For best image quality, you need to funnel as much light onto each pixel as possible. That means a larger lens, a larger CCD, and a smaller pixel count. That's why broadcast television cameras are so large.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
Camera phones will never take over DSLRs or serious digital cameras but are we seeing what will be the death of the entry level point and shoot digicam Wow - that's gotta be the observation of the centry.
Of course they wont - it is like saying that a laptop can never take over the Ipod even though the laptop might have a cutting edge audio-subsystem built into it. Where is the slashdot i used to read and enjoy?
But I suspect a camera will always take a better picture than a telephone. For the same reason, I go to a restaurant to eat great food instead of catching a plane.
you had me at #!
It's entirely true. People whine all the time these days about what the world "owes" them and how everything they don't like should be illegal. When really, they should just be living their own lives and letting others live theirs. Modern society has gotten pathetic with political correctness, censorship, and supression of individual liberties.
Because you (or at least a huge % of "they") are going to buy a phone anyway that's how.
I would gladly accept a lower resolution on my camera phone if the lens would be better. There's no way they're going to sell me an N-megapixel camera on my phone until it comes with a decent lens. My 4 year old Olympus digital still takes pictures that look better than ANY camera phone I've seen, and that's all because it has a decent lens. The problem with the camera phone industry is that it is suffering from the same problem as the CPU industry was - for CPUs it was all about MHz, now it's all about megapixels.
"then you shouldn't have worn a skirt.
If you wear clothing that is open to the world, then you have no right to complain about people looking through the natural opening. If your goal is to hide your underwear from the world, you should wear clothing that doesn't have openings through which your underwear can be seen."
Yeah! It's all your fault I can't control myself.
To the vast crowds of whiny would-be photographers bleating about how the lens on a camera phone is so much crummier than the one on a digital camera, I would like to say 'No Shit, Sherlock!'. :"Make phones bigger and heavier by fitting more batteries and sockets! The western world is overweight and drives everywhere. We don't need to design phones to be so tiny that we sacrifice use time or keyboard operability FFS! "
The phone manufacturers are competing on pixel count at the moment (because it is easy to measure and quote), when they all get to a few megapixels then they will compete on visual quality and you will see better lenses.
I will be glad when they put hard disks into phones so i can use it as data transport.
Oh, and while I am ranting
I feel better now.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Not the same at all.
People get LOOKED at all the time. It's just a fact. They don't get RAPED all the time. Rape can be helped. You can't help looking at someone.
If a girl wore shorts, then complained guys were looking at her legs, what would you say? Yeah... wear long pants.
Imagine being photographed in the changing rooms of your local gym or pool. I've heard that many gyms/pools have outright banned all phones in their changing rooms. Or imagine using the public facilities (Americans are embaressed by the word 'toilet') and having a camera-phone quickly stuck over the door of your stall.
Why is this all of a sudden a big deal when you put the camera on a phone? Small, very concealable cameras have been available for quite a long time.
Or try similar scenarios with children for some pedophilia-phobia (pedophobia?).
Yeah, because you can't take pictures of kids with a regular camera...
Imagine someone re-programming your phone so that it takes a photo every x minutes and secretly sends the images to someone.
You will have to worry about this in the future just as much as you will have to worry about somebody using your cell phone for voice recording. But they can do that right now... Maybe the paranoid just need a shutter on the camera and a physical mute for the microphone. Maybe you should go work on that mute button right now, eh? :p
This works better than a hidden camera because you trust your camera-phone. You own it, so you control it. Don't you?
You own the phone but have no control over the software running on it. The more processing power you put on a phone, the more complex the software will get. The more complex the software gets, the more bugs there will likely be.
I don't think anyone should be scared of their phone though... If someone wants to snoop on you there are currently much better ways than your cell phone. I'll bet the people who are paranoid about camera phones are the same people who think all the current security at airports "makes us safer" and isn't just there to make the sheep feel like the government is doing something :p.
Insightfull my ass,
Do you think it is perfectly legal or moral to dive under a girls skirt to take a look at her panties (or to check if she wears any)?
Using a camera doesn't make it any more legal or moral....
This is just a marketing trick, the only thing you get from a 7Mpixel camera phone is large crappy pictures instead of small crappy ones. 7 million pixels would demand larger optics than what I think is possible to cram in to a reasonably sized mobile phone.
Megahertz sell computers, and megapixels sell cameras; this shouldn't surprise anyone here.
/cranky after just waking up
Just so long as these marketing cretins don't forget that some people JUST WANT A FREAKING CELL PHONE and don't need cameras and milk steamers and tazers built into their phones, I couldn't care less about what crap parents buy to appease their children.