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7 Megapixel Camera Phone

Posted by CmdrTaco on Fri Nov 26, 2004 12:30 AM
from the thats-a-lotta-pixels dept.
Technology
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?"
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  • camcorder phone (Score:3, Interesting)

    by osho_gg (652984) on Friday November 26 2004, @12:31AM (#10922316)
    So, when do we start seeing phone with camcorder?
    • Hmm...they are already out there. What we need are ones with storage space for more than 30 seconds or so.

      • Re:camcorder phone (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26 2004, @01:05AM (#10922457)
        It's not going to cut it anyhow. Pushing more megapixels into a camera dosen't mean shit if it's sensors can't get a decent amount of light. Lenses be damned, because the sensor on this thing will fit inside a cheerio, therefore it's not going to collect enough light, therefore they've got to amplify the signals, therefore it's going to be noisy as shit.... You're going to get one remarkably large, and obnoxiously noisy picture, of overall lesser quality than a 1 megapixel phone with a sensor of comparable size... Regardless if the lens is a piece of plastic, or if it's some priceless artifact that was carved from a diamond found in a piece of angel shit.

        Great.

        Heck, much over 5MP in a snapshot camera is worthless, for that matter. You will see NO gains.

        But, I have absolutely no doubt that people are going to jump all over this, regardless of the cost, just so they can say to their dipshit friends "hey dude, I've got a 7mp phone, and look at my 180x200 OLED display it in all of it's glory", while they prostrate themselves at his knees begging him to shovel more shit into their brains.

        Seriously, folks. We've hit the barrier in what increased megapixels--at the cost of the size of sensors--can do for us, that is. If they're made any smaller, all they're going to be good for is receiving UV light, and I know how well I can see UV, if you get what I'm saying.
  • 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.

    • Re:Well.... it would depend on the target market. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26 2004, @12:40AM (#10922352)
      APERTURE!!!

      Who needs megapixels wghen the 80% of the pixels are grainy??
      What these cameras need is higher aperture ... dont they get it??
      • Depends on who "they" are. If "they" are the manufacturers, then be sure that they got it a long time ago. Unfortunately they only listen to that other group of "theys", namely the customers. And customers care only about megapixels, similar to how they only care about megaherz when it comes to computers ...
      • Indeed, at lens size needed for 7 megapixels, they should be talking about a camera that has an integrated phone in one corner, instead of the other way around...

        Of course it might be that it's only 2 megapixel camera that interpolates to double resolution or some other marketing gimmick...
      • > What these cameras need is higher aperture ... dont they get it??

        A larger aparture (less depth-of-field) would create the necessity
        of focusing. This in turn would require adding focusing mechanics
        (focus ring), focus feedback (deep zoom on LCD, or "good/bad focus"
        indicator based on edge contrast detection, or auto-focus (motored
        focus ring for large lens, or piezo mount for small lens).

        All this would either add to the cost, size and weight, reliability,
        and/or easy-to-use-ness of the product. The best
          • You will never get mod points by simply agreeing with the parent poster. (In fact, you simply waste the readers' time.) The key to Slashdot is to add something extra that the community might find interesting into your reply.


            Totally agree

            --Joey
                • Perhaps due to your moderation being meta-moderated unfair?

                  And the irony is that this happens, in my shorter experience, exactly when you do something useful and mod something redundant or off-topic... if you just go around modding things funny and insightful (I've seen very little insight here really) no one disagrees and you keep getting points!

                  It's like a positive feedback loop of dross...
    • Actually, I'm almost 30, and I think there's something to be said about having a camera in the phone. Living in such a deeply litigious age, it's almost handy to have something that can give you evidence. A phone you'll always have on you, but your camera you might not have on your persona. Sometimes a photo adds a lot of credibility.

  • A thought (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The Ancients (626689) on Friday November 26 2004, @12:35AM (#10922328) Homepage
    How will this affect traffic charges over GPRS or 3G? Will network providers charge more, considering how much more data a 7MP camera will push, in comparison to a 1MP (pretty much the current highest.

    In many places providers have been moving to flatrate, so they better haul ass and make sure they've got 3G (or at leat 2.5G) and the backhaul to carry this off. That and there's the small matter of porn as well...

    • Like all current high-res camera phones, it will likely have a 7MP mode which saves only to the memory card, and a low-res mode (320x240 or maybe 640x480) which can be sent by email.

      I don't know about the current crop of American camera phones, but Japanese camera phones can automatically downsize your pics when you email them.

  • Worrying... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NiTr|c (130325) <hackop&inumbrate,net> on Friday November 26 2004, @12:35AM (#10922329) Homepage
    With the introduction of higher resolution phones like this all over the place what are the privacy implications people face? 7 megapixels is quite clear indeed, and depending on the zoom (if any) you would be able to take some very intense candid photos. Also, as previously mentioned on slashdot, photographing sections of books or magazines in stores could grow in popularity. Depending on memory in the phone, one could walk into a store, snap photos of all the interesting articles of numerous magazines and then leave with a fantastic digital reproduction. So many evil intentions with these things...

    • Re:Worrying... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by The Ancients (626689) on Friday November 26 2004, @12:37AM (#10922344) Homepage
      No - what's worrying is the worst 'evil intention' you could come up with is photographing books or magazines :p

      <whispers> there's real people out there, dude...</whispers>

      • You're most certainly correct. You wonder if these will start getting banned in all types of public areas, similar to cigarettes. I can't say it would surprise me to see the image of a phone with a camera on it in the middle of a red circle with a slash through it. Might just be the next big thing. I smell regulation time!
    • 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.

      • Re:Worrying... (Score:5, Funny)

        by OmniVector (569062) <egapemoh ym ees> on Friday November 26 2004, @12:43AM (#10922370) Homepage
        this guy worries about people taking pictures of magazines, and what comes to mind for you? taking pictures of girls wearing skirts! ahhh slashdot :)
        • The problem is not about taking pictures of girls wearing skirts. Its about people using there phones to take pictures "inside" their skirts. If this happened to be your daughter who was getting pictures taken of would you be very happy as a parent? To me this is a serious privacy issue and not something to be laughed at.

            • Re:Worrying... (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Wonko (15033) on Friday November 26 2004, @03:32AM (#10922855) Homepage Journal

              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....
                • You have no to tell people in a public place that they can't look at certain things.

                  Rape involves touching someone, which is a violation of their freedom if done against their will. But in a public place, you have the right to look at anything that's being displayed for public viewing.

                  If a person is walking around naked (voluntarily) in a public palce, you have the right to look at them. If they didn't want someone looking at them naked, why did they go out in a public place?

                  Similarly, if you wear a sk
    • 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.

  • It'll be real good if it comes out.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by I kan Spl (614759) on Friday November 26 2004, @12:38AM (#10922347) Homepage
    From the article "'LG Electronics' spokesman comfirmed Thursday, "LG is considering the development of 6- or 7 -megapixel camera phone with Japanese companies including Canon." LG does this pretty often... I would be surprised if they have done anything more than blueprinting at this point. The company I work with deals in their products, and quite often they annouce the product like three or four years before they even have a working prototype...

  • Optics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jessohyes (175502) on Friday November 26 2004, @12:39AM (#10922351) Homepage
    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.
    • Just as important? I'd say more so. If your lens doesn't focus properly, reproduce colors/etc, no amount of megapixels will save it. Sorta like sticking an EF 28-90 on a 1Ds MKII...what a waste. I'll stick with my canon L glass where I can.

      • Re:Optics (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        WHAT? Nikon ED, bitch! (and one of the more underground holy wars comes to light on /. at last)
    • Right on. I would add to this that the quality of the CCD and the image software makes a huge difference as well. I recently bought a Casio z40 and while I love it for the features the images are not nearly as good as my old Nikon 950. Dark noise, sharpness and "bloom" are all much worse in the 4MP Casio than the 3MP Nikon.

      • Re:Optics (Score:5, Funny)

        by xs650 (741277) on Friday November 26 2004, @02:35AM (#10922697)
        " And how would your phone look like with that nikon lens attached to it? Bulky yes?"

        Is that a camera phone in your pocket, or are you glad to see me?
  • Now they will ask you to check your cell phone at the ticket counter when you go into the movie theatre.

  • Move along... (Score:3, Informative)

    by shikra (751390) on Friday November 26 2004, @12:42AM (#10922366) Journal

    Nothing to see here, Samsung already has a 5-megapixel digital camera [mobileburn.com] available [samsung.com].

    And it has a sliding cover ala the Matrix phone to boot.

  • 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.

  • Megapixels sell cameras (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26 2004, @12:45AM (#10922376)
    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.
  • The fact is that in order to improve the quality of a digital photo, the CCD or CMOS must be enlarged. The smaller the area of the sensor is, the more crowded it becomes for each photosite.

    Have you ever taken a digital picture with some bright point in it and seen a white stripe from that point up to the top of the picture? That is a CCD photosite area getting overloaded and spilling over into adjoining areas. It NEVER happens with film because film does not rely on electricity to save the image.

    The way to avoid this and other digital 'noise' is to put more space between each photosite, which of course requires either less photosites (like cutting sensors by 1/3 by using Foveon) or increasing the sensor area.

    If you want Foveon, you will be paying out the nose for it.

    If you want a larger area, you had better be prepared to upgrade the lens as well as the camera body. Thicker body and wider lens, IOW.

    A phone has a limited amount of volume that it can grow to. Current phones may seem small, but operators are loath to accept larger phones. So even though this LG phone may sport 7 megapixels, it is unlikely that it will be rendering pictures with any sort of acceptable quality.

    7 megapixels of noise is still noise.

  • lame (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pHatidic (163975) on Friday November 26 2004, @12:46AM (#10922388) Homepage
    what would really impressive me is if LG came out with a phone without a camera at all. I would kill for a black and white razor phone without a camera (i know i know its motorola but still)

  • Um... How Are You Going to Send It Anywhere? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ewhac (5844) on Friday November 26 2004, @12:54AM (#10922417) Homepage Journal

    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

  • Don't know about this... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by laughingcoyote (762272) <barghesthowl&excite,com> on Friday November 26 2004, @12:55AM (#10922422) Journal

    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.

  • Ehhh, its not about the megapixels (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Razzak (253908) on Friday November 26 2004, @12:57AM (#10922433)
    ...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.
    • DigiCams still have another 3-5 years left in'em

      Oh? And what, pray tell, will replace them? There is no way we are going back to chemical film-- the media costs, processing time, and lack of easily transmitted imagery have killed that whole scene (except for professionals and studios shooting on the big box cameras).

      Do you realize that the vast majority of amatuer photography are people taking snaps of their friends, sports events, gaudy frontages in Vegas, or the big donut in LA?

      I am assuming you are

  • an idea... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26 2004, @01:02AM (#10922448)
    What would really be cool is if they could split the camera off from the phone and just sell both separately. For instance without the components necessary for the phone to function, you could add more sophisticated photography features like a bigger lens or a more buffer space. I see a big marketing opportunity here.

  • Probably looks terrible, too (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sahonen (680948) on Friday November 26 2004, @01:06AM (#10922460) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • cat got my tongue (Score:3, Insightful)

    by atari2600 (545988) on Friday November 26 2004, @01:19AM (#10922495)
    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?

  • PQ sucks with camera phones (Score:3, Interesting)

    by doormat (63648) on Friday November 26 2004, @01:22AM (#10922506) Journal
    Even with the new megapixel phones, the picture quality is crapola. They need a 10-fold increase in the quality of the lens/optics before they start ramping to 4, 5 or 7MP.

  • I hate to sound old fashioned (Score:5, Insightful)

    by toby (759) on Friday November 26 2004, @01:27AM (#10922527) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Not anytime soon... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Omega697 (586982) on Friday November 26 2004, @01:40AM (#10922565)
    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.

  • One gigapixel? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rice_burners_suck (243660) on Friday November 26 2004, @02:21AM (#10922658)
    Well if your camera phone is gonna be a 7 megapixel, then maybe the new DSLRs of the next few years will be, like, 100 megapixel.

    That would be cool, because you could shoot film-quality photographs at poster size if you wanted.

    I can't wait until the first gigapixel camera. Which reminds me of the time an old friend of mine and I were talking about computers. I had a whole whopping 150 megs of hard drive space. Your cheapest computer today comes with more megs of RAM than that. He was a hard core computer geek, though, and he had around 300 megs of hard drive space. I thought that was a ridiculously large hard drive. It seemed like an endless amount of space that would never fill up completely. Anyway, he told me about this guy who had a "gigabyte", pronouncing the first "G" in "gigabyte" like the "G" in "giant"... Nobody pronounces "gigabyte" like that anymore. I was like, "What the hell is a gigabyte?" He said something along the lines of, "I don't know, but it's a LOT of space!" I was like, "Holy shit." Nowadays the cheapest hard drive has like 20 gigabytes, and most computers come with at least 40. And that space fills up so fast with applications and junk that it's not enough. I can't believe that shit.

    So I can't wait until the first gigapixel camera. Shit, you'll be able to shoot a 60' by 40' photograph and get film-quality results. We could send that thing to like Mars or something.

  • Who is surprised... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by InadequateCamel (515839) on Friday November 26 2004, @07:13AM (#10923548)
    Megahertz sell computers, and megapixels sell cameras; this shouldn't surprise anyone here.

    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.

    /cranky after just waking up
    • I hate cellphones too, and do not own one. I hate the phones, I hate the pricing, I hate the services, I hate the companies involved. ... however, curious little devices like the Nokia 6820 [nokia.com] are starting to woo me towards the dark side. As data fees continue to decrease, Mobile Internet is starting to become attractive.

      Bastards!
    • I know what you mean. There's no point in having one. I once had one, but no one ever called me since I don't have any frineds.

      Sucks being a geek.

      *Sigh*

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