Megapixels & Camera Phones

CEmongler writes "Consumer Electronics publication CoolTechZone.com tackles the integrated camera attachments in today's cell phones. According to the author, "The camera integration has in fact reached such a stage that any self-respecting phone would incorporate at least a megapixel camera. The cutting-edge feature to have though is the 2-megapixel variety. The question is: is it really worth the extra money you pay for it? Without getting into model-by-model comparisons, I am questioning the entire range of 2-megapixel camera phones. Are they really worth it? For the most part, no."

Comments

No, they're not worth it!

[vidarlo]

And why? Because the optics still sucks. I guess there ain't enough space for a good camera inside a phone, because the optics ain't small enough. While the ccd or cmos sensor is small enough, it needs good optics to give good quality.

Say you've got the good optics, and a decent sensor... A ccd uses more power than a cmos, and needs more light. A cmos however, gives lots of artifacts (noise) in the picture, but performs better in low-ligt conditions, and needs less power.

• CMOS sensor - low power, low light level needed, but artifacts (noise) in the picture
• CCD sensor - powerhungry, needs good lgiht, good quality

Ok, so we go for a ccd. Then we need a good flash, which takes even more power. Power which has to come from a capacitor since a battery can't deliver high enough voltage and enough current fast enough. A capacitor and flash takes up space.

In short, if we want small phones, we won't get decent image quality. If we can accept a phone twice as big as the ones we have, we can just bundle together a normal compact camera and a phone...

Re:No, they're not worth it!

[AmigaAvenger]

Just one thing to point out, every single high end Canon digital SLR camera uses CMOS sensors. (at least the lower end up to prosumer slr's do, can't afford to buy a pro canon digital so I haven't bothered investigating them, but I'm fairly sure they are cmos also)

CMOS CAN be result in quality that surpasses CCD, all while using far lower power and generating much less heat.

Worth it: if you can get pictures somewhere useful

[mtg101]

Having a 2 megapixel camera is pretty pointless if you only use it to put a picture of your partner on the phone's main screen, or to send multimedia messages (which reduces the quality to something like VGA quality).

However if you can get the image from the phone to an internet site like Flickr, TextAmerica, Kodak, &c, then it is worth having a 2 megapixel image, just like it's worth having a decent amount of megapixels for your regular digital camera. The higher quality is useful for displaying on a PC, or for printing the photo, and so on.

Unfortunately it's very hard to get your pictures from your phone to the internet. Email and WAP uploaders have proved not good enough for this task, and hardly anyone does this.

A new generation of software is emerging on phones though. Services like ShoZu allow you to upload full quality images from your phone to sites like Flickr, TextAmerica, &c, in a very simple manner, and also allow editing of titles, descriptions and even tags both before and after upload. With this sort of service on your phone it really is worth having a decent camera in your phone.

Having bought a 2MP Camera Phone...

[Chicane-UK]

I have to say I feel it was entirely worth it.

Firstly i'm not coming on to defend my purchase. To be honest the phone was free anyway on a contract upgrade I needed to make so I thought i'd go for it.

The phone is a Nokia N70 and, for all of its foibles (including the incredibly annoying slide open camera activation / lens protection cover) the camera stands out as a superb product.

I'd love to link to an image i've taken from it but fear the slashdot effect would ruin me on hosting charges.. but under the right conditions (ie NOT night time) the camera returns impressive pictures. Yes, in low light it makes everything look incredibly washed out - yes the delay is enormous on taking a picture - but in good average daylight conditions pictures come back looking almost as good as those of my old 2MP Olympus point and shoot which i've since retired.

One of the 'points' of camera phones for me was just having a camera with you at all times in case something unusual happened - be that a car accident (and you need to record photographic evidence of the scene), a good sunset, etc - the increase in MP allows you to do this more and more - previous generations meant that the picture was only 640x480 or so and this didn't really allow you to get the whole picture across!

Cheers.

Re:Problematic

[StevenHenderson]

As a sprint consumer, I would like to inform you that Spring Mobile Phone Corporation doesn't offer a Treo without a camera.

Try again.

Re:Problematic

[Lumpy]

One of the IT guys got upset that he was going to miss his wife's call that she was ready for the hospital with their kid and came up with the idea.

WE contacted a tamper sticker manufacturer and asked them what could be done and if they had any "removeable" types. They did we tested several different types and picked one that only needed an alcahol pad to fully clean the tiny bit of residue fro mthe phone after use. They are a PITA to install without flaking off the tell-tale indicator paint/layer but after a few months the security guys are good at it.

so we had them print up some with serial numbers. works great.. might not be DoD security standards but it passed us subversive types attempts at thwarting it here.

I was only able to make silicone oil to make it so I could remove it without damage. but it's extremely obvious when putting the sticker on that sometihng is wrong as it will slide all over instead of sticking.