Next-gen iPhone to sport 3.2Mp camera?
5Mp Apple device coming later this year, claim moles
The next iPhone could have a 3.2Mp camera on board if leaked details concerning an alleged Apple camera contract are to be believed.
Unnamed moles have told website Digitimes that digital imaging firm OmniVision has won an order from Apple to supply it with 3.2Mp CMOS image sensors - specifically for use on the next-generation iPhone.
The firm reportedly beat off rival firms STMicroelectronics and Aptina Imaging to win the contract.
And OmniVision must have impressed, because the market moles let slip that the firm’s also won a separate five-year contract to supply Apple with 5Mp sensors for “another Apple product” that could be launched “later in the year”.
Let’s hope the mole is correct, on both counts. ®
COMMENTS
@J
Suggest getting your eyes tested... a 4x6 print from a 2m pixel camera isn't particularly "more than enough". Seems you've read "Which?" magazine too much, who still to this day say that there is not point to a camera with more than 3m pixels...
More to the point, the iPhone's camera isn't a camera replacement - never has. It's for viewing and sharing on an iPhone. What bugs me is that I would prefer a decent(ish) camera on my phone so that I can take those "spur of the moment pics", with the option of printing them 10x12.
Sorry, but the low resolution "for" argument isn't working. Latest and greatest please, this is market place for innovation..
I'd like to see
I'd like to see real world pictures from these "8 MPix" camera phones...
What I do know is that the 1.3 Mpix camera on my Samsung takes noisy, blandly colored and soft, not quite sharp (that's usually the noise reduction's fault in real cameras) pictures. They are "acceptable", in the sense that I can see what's in the picture and all that. Usable in an emergency maybe, but only that. I'd like to see expensive camera phone pictures to know if they can be any good.
Re: the MPix count war, that is ridiculous, and not just for the reasons given above. First of all, if you're printing 10x15cm (4x6in) then 2 MPix is more than enough in a real camera -- I've done that with a little Canon some 5 or 6 years ago, and you can see artifacts when printing 15x20cm (8x6in) if you pay quite some attention. For posting to the web, even 2Mpix is overkill -- if the picture is well taken. More pixels are good if the photo is to be cropped, but I wonder how many people go to that trouble with their drunk party pictures. And if you crop, you'd better have a good quality image or you will have an ugly, noisy crop. Like the ones from my camera phone, which I've used only a little to see how it performed and haven't bothered ever since (carry a real, point-and-shoot(ish) camera in my backpack anyway).
Shock..
...it might even be for one of their desktop or laptop computers, rather than the the iPhone....
But hey... i'm not in the least bit bothered, my 2Mp camera on my iPhone takes perfectly adequate pictures, and video for the use i ever plan to make from a mobile phone... i have a camera for taking pictures and unlike any camera on a phone my actual camera takes very good pictures.
Trollery
But it won't stop the trolls from their going on about "the next overpriced underspecced iphone".
Grow up FGS!
I have several cameras which I use for photography. I have an iPhone which I use for calls and pissing about. If you want to use a Nokisson whatever ... fine.
Now fuck off!
@Steve Ives
"All phone camera, irrespective of resolution, are of average quality"
Rubbish. They range from unusably shockingly bad at the cheap end to perfectly acceptable for most users/uses at the top end. They're never going to have great low light performance or compete with a decent SLR (or even a quality compact camera), but something like an N95 is perfectly usable for everyday photography.
