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Sony CEO Lets Slip That iPhone 5 Will Have 8MP Camera
An anonymous reader writes "During a recent interview with Walt Mossberg, Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer may have inadvertently let it slip that Sony plans to supply Apple with 8 megapixel cameras for the next-gen iPhone. While discussing the Japanese earthquake, Stringer noted that Sony's camera sensor plant in Sendai had been affected and that shipments of 8 megapixel camera sensors to Apple were subsequently delayed."
Who cares?
I think you mean "inadvertently".
This is news?
More megapixels means more noise if you don't increase the size of the detector.
The Zune MHD will have a QSXGA, 60fps cam, not impressed. ...
Shit, did I just let that slip?
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
This rumor isn't credible. 8MP is a bad idea unless you make the lens and sensor bigger. The trouble is, as you increase the megapixels you reduce the amount of light the sensor can collect. Creating significantly poorer photos in low light conditions and slightly poorer photos in normal conditions.
If you have a huge lens and sensor, like some phones and like a point-and-shoot camera then 8MP (or more) is a great idea. But apple isn't likely to do either of those.
They already made the lens and sensor about as good as they could in the iPhone 4. I think we're a long time away from seeing an 8MP iPhone camera.
You do realize, that other than raw numbers, megapixels have very little to do with final quality?
You do realize that cellphone sensors are limited by diffraction so while you can resolve finer detail through unsharp masks, physics does limit the usable resolution of optical sensors. Making things worse, the need for anti-aliasing filters will further soften the photos. APS-C DSLRs have reached the point where they are diffraction limited to f/8.0 and yet while the megapixel race has slowed down a bit, it has not yet ended. If you need a 100% crop from the newest APS-C cameras, it requires minor to moderat sharpening during postprocessing. As the sensor size decreases the circle of confusion becomes relatively larger as the photo sites ("pixels") decrease.
Unless they find some way to increase the lens size (which will require bending space-time) the megapixel race is utterly pointless, because the resulting photos will either appear softer and softer, or more and more artificial due to requiring more and more sharpening.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
In other news, not a shit was given that at the interview...
Megapixels are meaningless if they aren't coupled with a larger sensor and better glass. Cheap plastic and a tiny sensor still make it a shitty camera. It's the same picture whether it's 4Mp or 8Mp. Now if they put a real Xenon flash on it, that might be something interesting.
I doubt very much that Sony is going to be involved in the naming conventions of future iPhones.
The Sony guy saying "iPhone 5" is just him trying to describe the next generation in absence of an official name.
For all we know, they might not even use numbers. Often, when it gets to version 4 or 5 you start to see different naming conventions come into play, like "NT" or the names of big cats or something. At some point, just incrementing the number starts to lose meaning and doesn't provide enough differentiation. I doubt they'd change the "iPhone" part because it's such a successful brand, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see something other than iPhone "6" or iPhone "7".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Take for example the current crop of Sony 16 mp APS sensors found in the Nikon D7000 and Pentax K-5 versus any APS sensor before them, for example the 6 mp sensors that were the high iso darlings of their day.
Nokia defaulted on the game the day they partnered with Microsoft on Windows Phone 7. Nokia personnel and shareholders just haven't felt the effects of their loss yet.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Parent should not have been modded down. There is a world of difference between "troll" and "mindless fanboy".
Making things worse, the need for anti-aliasing filters will further soften the photos.
Soften? Pastelify, blur, undetailify, and just generally fuck up are terms that much better describe what noise reduction filters in typical cell phone cameras do to pictures. :(
I want a 1.3-2MP sensor in my next phone...
Often, when it gets to version 4 or 5 you start to see different naming conventions come into play, like "NT" or the names of big cats or something.
So we're probably looking at the iPhone Tabby?
8 megapixels is nothing special, what is interesting is if the sensor can provide good pictures.
You can get great pictures with a 4 megapixel sensor. The noise level of the sensor and the optics is a lot more important.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I care because I didn't know that Sony supplied components to Apple. Maybe I have just been living in a cave or something....but I didn't know.
And now that I DO know, Apple is on my do-not-buy list.
I hate Sony THAT much. And you should too.
And how many apps does it have? Must be plenty seeing how Nokia is jumping to Windows Phone 7.
The quality of the software that processes the data coming from the sensor is vitally important to the quality of the image produced.
This has been amply demonstrated by some DSLR's that use the same Sensor and almost identical quality lenses only to have a vast difference in the quality (bokeh) of the resulting image.
This is why you pay lots of $$$$ to the likes of Nikon & Canon and less to Sony especially as Sony make most of the Nikon DSLR Sensors.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
3 years ahead in camera technology, 6 years behind in smartphone OS technology!
Now that it has been slipped, that feature will now be dropped like every other feature that has been leaked in the past.
The game.
Doesn't sound like a big issue -- I've been bending space-time around me since the day when I was born.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Seeing that all latest Sony Ericsson phones also come with the 8MP Exmor sensor.
Because no other iGadget would require a camera like that
It's either for an iPhone or an iPod touch (or most likely both).
The iPod touch camera is significantly worse than the iPhone camera and will most likely remain so as the iPod touch is thinner than the iPhone.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
8 megapixels is nothing special....
And it looks like there still won't be an optical zoom since the Xperia-Pro only has digital zoom
And don't tell me they can't put an optical zoom in an iPhone: the Sony DSC-T7 was only 14.8mm and had a 3x optical zoom way back in 2005 while the iPhone 4 is 9.3mm. I'll gladly sacrifice 5.5mm for a 3x optical zoom (assuming technology hasn't advanced since 2005)
Digital zoom is a joke, I'd don't care if they sell a 50 megapixel iPhone I'd trade it all for a good 3 megapixel with a 3x optical zoom.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
So is Steve Jobs going to throw a tantrum and terminate Sony like he's done before when a component maker lets something slip?
It depends on whether or not Steve Jobs throws a hissy fit.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/00/07/19/apple_turns_cold_shoulder_towards_ati_at_macworld.html
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
Why would Apple get 8mp Sensors? When the len's infront of them will be awful? What i want to see is a little tiny Lecia or the like lens built into the iPhone, then we get good good glass= good image. Simples
Shareholders did, Nokia's stock took a noticeable dive after they announced the partnership. See here.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I was going to say the same thing. I have a 14mp camera that replaced a 6mp camera. Curiously, the image quality is the same.
It's taken something like 7 or 8 years for compact camera manufacturers to realize (or, perhaps, "come to grips with" is better) that shoving more megapixels into a tiny sensor doesn't give the user better photos. Unfortunately the phone manufacturers apparently haven't learned that lesson.
Actually I am probably being unfair. They're just giving the customers what they want, and - even here on Slashdot - I still see people saying things like "my phone has a 6MP sensor, so it's better than an iPhone's camera". Frankly, these phone cameras are mediocre at best.
Thing is, with the sensor size, lens size, and lens quality... I will hazard a guess that the maximum true resolution any of these phone cameras can resolve is more on the order of two or three megapixels - and THAT is assuming the subject is well lit!
#DeleteChrome
If you want zoom, get a real camera.
Meh, phone cameras suck in general, high mega-pixels are mostly just for advertising (the optics are too poor to really take advantage of them). Apple has enough other good points to advertise on and enough fanboys that they really don't need to play the game of inflating a headline spec while actually reducing what that spec is thought the represent (put too many megapixels on for your optics and you just increase noise without increasing details).
What apple really got right was the interface and in particular the web browser. Mobile phones have had web browsers before but afaict they sucked and were little used. By combining a really good multi-touch screen with a good browser engine apple created a mobile browser that people actually wanted to use.
Similarly symbian could support user apps but it was horrible to code for (based on a basterdised version of C++) and there was no central place to distrubute apps. The iphone didn't initially support user apps at all but when they did add support they did it in a way that brought them a huge number of developers.
I don't like the way apple locks their phones down or the way they make the batteries difficult to replace but they got many things right with the iPhone. Things other smartphone vendors rushed to copy.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Maybe they could use a lens which pops out of the back of the camera when in use?
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I doubt very much that Sony is going to be involved in the naming conventions of future iPhones.
The Sony guy saying "iPhone 5" is just him trying to describe the next generation in absence of an official name.
Actually, he neither said anything about "iPhone 5" nor about 8 megapixels. http://www.9to5mac.com/59019/howard-stringer-says-sony-image-sensors-delayed-for-apples-ipad/:
Paraphrased: “Our best sensor technology is built in one of the (tsunami) affected factories. Those go to Apple for their iPhonesor iPads. Isn’t that something? They buy our best sensors from us?”
Fandroids hate facts.
A very high quality lens will only help if the scene is very bright. At other times, the small aperture means you get stuck with excessive noise or motion blur regardless of the quality of the lens.
If there's areas on a computing device that you can't really improve, and you still want people to plod along the upgrade path, just bump the numbers - like in the ca. 2000 "Mhz wars".
Digital zoom with zero sensor noise is no different than optical zoom (given the circumstances you offered where you are willing to trade MP for zoom). So picking 3 MP with 3x vs 50 MP with no zoom will leave you with half the usable data (presuming the unlikely event that what you want to zoom in on is 100% filling a 3x zoom window, and leave you with even less if that isn't the case).
Learn to love Alaska
Yeah, I'm glad you agree re: Nokia at least. Unfortunately, it seems that to some /.'ers who happen to have mod points today, calling a spade a spade regarding iPhone competitors is trolling.
So, in the world that today's mods live in, iDevice competitors have actually got their act together? Even if they could manage to come out with something with higher specs in all features than a given iDevice, there's still inertia to deal with. But what's amazing is they come out with inferior phones and pads, and then expect to compete.
I don't know who I offended: Nokia, Android, or WebOS fans? The fact is, I am a fan of better open devices, the more open the better. And the way to get their is through criticism, not closing your eyes and shouting "I can't hear you."
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
It's a tiny cheap camera. It will have a cheap sensor and a cheap lens. It may be better than a 3 year old Nokia N95, but it will still be a bad camera.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Tne N8's 12 MP camera has a ginormous sensor that produces absolutely amazing quality pictures, even better than the vast majority of point and shoot cameras.
Sure, you would. But when was the last time you recall Apple making even one concession to function over form? They'll put the 8Mpixel sensor in because that's the largest any reputable company makes in 1/4", same size as the iPhone 4 camera.
The camera in a smart phone is a useful tool for scanning, augmented reality, videophone, and "better than nothing" snapshots. Apple needs 8Mpixel because other top tier smartphones have had them since last summer, and more than ever, Apple actuqlly has to compete with features,not just hype. But if you want a camera, buy a camera.
-Dave Haynie
I just replaced an 8Mpixel camera ith an 18Mpixel camera, and the image quality is dramatically better. That's because these are DSLRs with large (APS-C) sensors. On a much smaller sensor, you're already diffraction limited... more pixels will do nothing to deliver a sharper image. Before you factor in the blurring due to Bayer interpolation, a 1/4" sensor is already diffraction limited at f2.8 and up... at 2Mpixels. Increasingly, sensor resolution boosts are just "marketing bits".
-Dave Haynie
Probably not any more once Steve hears about it. iP5 will probably have a 6 MP camera from another vendor.
We're already at the point in APS sensors where diffraction limits are kicking in at f8... that's APS-C at 18Mpixels. We don't see it yet, though, because they're all doing Bayer interpolation, which increases the effective circle of confusion by about a factor of 9. So there's still some practical resolution to be had in APS sensors, but it's not going on forever.
The ironic thing here is that, assuming Sigma/Foveon ever get their act together on an RGB (three sensors per pixel site) senor chip with a modern spatical resolution, they'll be just in time to still suck, due to diffraction.
-Dave Haynie
Supposedly about a 1/2" sensor (you have to know about the history of videcon tubes and other ancient video stuff to know about sensor measurements... anyone who just gets out a rules and measures will get the wrong answer). That's not bad. Higher end P&S cameras like the Canon G12 or Nikon P7000 usually rock something like a 1/1/7" sensor.
Moving upward, the Panasonic and Olympus DSLR, EVIL, and ILCC's sport 4/3" sensor... APS-C, APS-H, and full frame 35mm move up from there. Looking in the other direction, cheaper P&S cameras from reputable companies go down to about 1/2.5", which is also close the largest sensor you'll find in a consumer camcorder (I think JVC have a few at 1/2.3").
Some of the "Flip" style webcam devices have used the same 1/4" sensor you usually find in a cellphone, and a lens to match. But they better of these have slightly better sensors today, the reasonably-good-for-a-Flip-clone Kodak ZI8 has a 1/2.5" sensor. Though the N8 still bests those.
To bad Nokia's dumping all their interesting stuff for a cozy spot in bed with Microsoft on Window 7 Phone.
-Dave Haynie
Lucky only 8 of these megapixel sensors have been delayed. The other 10 million of them will be delivered on time.
If the lens can't resolve sharp image even for 5MP, then 15MP won't help anything. With a better lens (which also has to be physically larger) higher sensor resolution will start to matter, but then we are talking about SLRs, not smart phones.
All this talk about megapixels is mainly just marketing for clueless people.