05-15-2004, 12:05 AM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Qualcomm's 6 Megapixel Camera Chips
"Mobile phone technology provider Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq:QCOM - news) on Wednesday unveiled a new line of chips with ultra-high resolution camera features and said it was making inroads in advanced new markets. In a volley of announcements coinciding with the company's spring Wall Street analyst briefing here, Qualcomm introduced the first of its "7000" series, all-in-one chips that offer up to 6-megapixel cameras and full-motion camcorder recording. Six-million pixel image quality would make cameraphones based on Qualcomm chips competitive with the most advanced digital cameras being sold in consumer markets worldwide."
6 MP on a phone? 8O Higher resolution is one thing, but what about the image quality? I've yet to see a photo from a camera or Pocket PC Phone edition that looks decent, regardless of resolution. They all look like they're stuck in the world of 1997 digital cameras, which is not a good thing. Another thing to consider is the storage requirements of a 6 MP JPEG image - you'd need quite a big of memory for it to be practical, and forget about sending that over MMS. Ultimately I think this is moving in the wrong direction - if people could get a high-quality 2 MP image that would make a decent 4x6 print, I think they'd be perfectly content. For those of you that use camera phones, what do you think about this?
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05-15-2004, 12:30 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 10
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I totally agree. If I want a high quality image, I use my Sony V1. With that camera I have full control over all the photographic settings (ISO, shutter, aperture), and also it can be held steady or attached to a tripod.
When I'm carying my phone around, I might take a photo of something amusing or interesting that I otherwise would not have bothered with. The point here is that I'm interested in capturing the essence of the image (e.g. words on a sign, the colour of a sunset, or the badge on a ferrari), not necessarily all the nuances.
I reckon if they could improve the quality and exposure of existing CMOS sensors, that would be plenty enough for me. The current sensors do very poorly in low light, and have trouble capturing the depth of light and colour in most landscape images. If that requires more megapixels, then cool, but surely 6MP is overkill?
Also re MMS, I imagine they'd have to do something like the 'email mode' on my camera, whereby a full-size image is saved along with a 640x480 highly compressed jpeg. The phone software would probably be intelligent enough to only send the smaller image.
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05-15-2004, 12:50 AM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 1,041
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With the memory requirements, I wouldn't worry too much about that anymore. You can get a 512MB SD card for almost $100. A card like that will carry quite a bit.
That would be so cool to have a 6MP camera device on my iPAQ 5550!
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05-15-2004, 03:16 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 190
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I agree with you also Jason. I can't see how having 6mp over 1mp, or even 2mp, would benefit these phones especially when they use the little digital sensors as lenses. Also, the point about transferring 4-5mb files over the airwaves could be, not only slow, but also expensive.
I'd say if you want portability in a camera then carry a Canon S400 along with your phone, that is, off-course, when you don't want to lug around your EOS 10D :mrgreen: 0X
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05-15-2004, 04:10 AM
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Philosopher
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 559
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While I agree that this wouldn't work in most of today's phones, it's very cool to see innovation like this. Someday, we'll all carry around one device that does everything, from phone to camera to PDA...and it will do all functions equally well.
So, this is just a little bit ahead of its time. 8)
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05-15-2004, 04:24 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 21
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The lens is the issue, not the sensor
:soapbox: The issue for camera phones is the same as in all small, inexpensive cameras: the lens is tiny and (usually) of poor quality. Simply speaking, camera lenses work just like the magnifying glass you used to burn your name into tennis balls when you were a kid - they gather all the light that hits their surface and concentrate it. The bigger the glass, the more light it can gather from the same scene. (Think about how wide the lenses sports photographers use are, and you'll get the idea.)
Camera phone lenses aren't able to gather enough light to be very useful outside of bright sunlight, and forget about telephoto with a lens that size, even if it were available! (Not enough light hitting the glass to take a good exposure of your kid on the stage.)
Camera phones are wonderful for snapshots - they let you capture moments you missed before because you weren't carrying your clunky old camera. What they lack in quality they make up for in spontaneity.
Putting a 6MP chip in such a device is silly, though. The only reason for it is because most consumers have no idea how much lens quality and size affect their pictures. Just as computer manufacturers latched onto MHz as a (misleading) shorthand for speed, camera manufacturers have used MP as a (misleading) measure of image quality. You'll get a much better 8x10 from your 2MP Nikon digital camera than from a 6MP camera phone, although most consumers would never expect it.
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05-15-2004, 04:47 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 35
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Re: The lens is the issue, not the sensor
It's true that given a choice most consumers will opt for the "bigger number", but I would venture that probably the "only other good reason" for 6 MP sensor in a camera phone is that you'll be able to use digital zoom without as much quality degradation as you see today. A VGA sensor (300 k pixels) zoomed to 4x (effective output resolution now 160 x 120) just looks horrific, but if you downsample a 6 MP sensor to VGA most of the time, and then downsample some portion of the sensor for digital zoom (still "saving" VGA into the file, but now it's not from the whole sensor) you're at least going to have more useful quality at 4x... which is important because it's nearly impossible to squeeze optical zoom elements into the extremely limited space that manufacturers allocate for the camera part of the phone... executive summary: if you want any kind of zoom feature in a camera phone that doesn't have room for moving lenses, then you benefit from a higher resolution sensor, even if you don't (in most cases) save off the full resolution of the sensor.
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Originally Posted by ND Bob
...The only reason for it is because most consumers have no idea how much lens quality and size affect their pictures. Just as computer manufacturers latched onto MHz as a (misleading) shorthand for speed, camera manufacturers have used MP as a (misleading) measure of image quality. You'll get a much better 8x10 from your 2MP Nikon digital camera than from a 6MP camera phone, although most consumers would never expect it....
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05-15-2004, 06:41 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 21
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Re: The lens is the issue, not the sensor
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Originally Posted by cludwig
I would venture that probably the "only other good reason" for 6 MP sensor in a camera phone is that you'll be able to use digital zoom without as much quality degradation as you see today.
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That's a good point - if you had a camera that saved only VGA resolution images, a 6 MP sensor would give you an effective 20x zoom with no loss of quality (i.e., no upwards interpolation), and without having to engineer a miniature zoom lens. Hadn't thought of using a huge sensor as a virtual optical zoom lens. :idea:
It depends how such a chip is marketed, then. If it's sold as a 6 MP camera, people are going to be very disappointed in the image quality. If it's pitched as essentially a portable webcam with a really long virtual zoom, I could go for that.
There'd need to be some term other than "digital zoom" to describe the process, though... snobs like me get all worked up over digital zooms that just up-interpolate the detail that's captured optically. This is entirely different - for wide-angle pictures, the interpolation would be downward, and for long telephoto ones there would be no interpolation at all... one pixel = one pixel. That's far preferable to the digital zooms provided on regular digicams, even if it's only practical in a minature device like this.
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05-15-2004, 07:05 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 21
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Re: Qualcomm's 6 Megapixel Camera Chips
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Originally Posted by Jason Dunn (quoting Reuters)
"Six-million pixel image quality would make cameraphones based on Qualcomm chips competitive with the most advanced digital cameras being sold in consumer markets worldwide."
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It's statements like the one Jason's quoting here that worry me. Sure this chip could give your cellular "webcam" a monstro-zoom for VGA images, (which would be wonderful), but there's no way a camera phone will ever, ever, EVER be "competitive with the most advanced digital cameras being sold."
The author of that Reuters article obviously doesn't know the first thing about cameras to make as ridiculous a statement as that. :roll: "Image quality" and "image resolution" are NOT synonymous, despite the popular misconception.
No one expects a $7.95 single-use camera to take images of the same caliber as a $2000 SLR paired up with a $2500 lens, even though the medium they're using (35mm film, ISO 200) would have the exact same "resolution." The optics of the camera, its focusing and metering systems, its manual capabilities, and so on all have a tremendous amount of influence over the final image quality.
Digital is no different... a 6 MP image from a digital SLR will usually surpass the quality from the 6-8 MP consumer or even "prosumer" models, because of all the difference I just mentioned.
It's very unfortunate that even technology writers seem to drop the ball on this issue. I can't imagine how disappointed people would be with their 6 MP phonecams if the hype is that these little toys are capable of producing anything but casual images.
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05-15-2004, 07:18 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 21
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CMOS vs. CCD?
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Originally Posted by bgracewood
I reckon if they could improve the quality and exposure of existing CMOS sensors, that would be plenty enough for me. The current sensors do very poorly in low light, and have trouble capturing the depth of light and colour in most landscape images.
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Maybe you're thinking just of consumer-level cameras, but quite a few D-SLRs are using CMOS sensors now.  All of Canon's newer models use this technology, and the results are outstanding. There are many benefits, and I'd expect that CMOS will hold both the high and low ends of the market before too long.
Take a look at http://www.acdsystems.com/English/Co...2003-11-29.htm for a good summary of the two technologies.
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