Five Megapixels Camera Phones This Year!

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/tech/200407/kt2004072117425811790.htm' target='_blank'>http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/tech/200407/kt2004072117425811790.htm</a><br /><br /></div><i>"LG Economic Research Institute (LGERI) predicts camera phones will eat into 40 percent of the digital camera market by 2008, reports The Korea Times. Recent rapid advances in camera phones are causing the Institute to be more "optimistic" about problems for the digital camera marketplace. The organization thought two megapixels would be the ceiling for camera phones, but the Institute admitted it was wrong since three megapixel handsets already have been introduced."</i><br /><br />The article further reports that South Korean handset vendors plan to introduce five megapixel camera phones this year. The competition is supposed to stiffen between digital cameras and camera phones in the short term with digital cameras still ahead, however mid range cameras are soon to be dominated by camera phones. There isn't anything radically new here, but it is interesting to hear that 5MP camera phones are on their way.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

So now instead of getting a million crappy pixels, you now can get five million of them! :D Makes me so happy.. NOT!

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Yeah, really. Let's see some focus on optics now. Over 1 MP is useless with current optics in cameraphones.

[Suhit Gupta]

I guess I am not as pessimistic about this as you guys. My guess is that if the goal if to get up to 5MP then the quality of the optics is automatically going to have to go up. Granted that it won't get to the level of a standalone 5MP digital camera but I think it would be more decent that the crappy 1MP camera phones out there now.

Suhit

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Eh, no, it's not just the optics.. electronics, processing software, the alogrithms for the bayer filter, etc. The terrible colours and exposure you see on camera phones is an electronics and software issue, and given the current compromises that exist, I'm not seeing much of an improvement soon. Better that the megapixels remain low (around 1-2), and that they work on improving the quality rather than giving themselves another headache to work around (5 mp requires more power, data to manage, etc).