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5-megapix 'iPhone 4' set for June?

Under test today

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The fourth generation iPhone has already been spotted in the wild. It will debut on June 28. It will have a 5-megapixel camera. And it will contribute to the 40-45 million iPhones that Apple plans to sell next year.

Or so says a flurry of recent reports.

From MacRumors comes word than one iPhone developer has spotted a reference to "iPhone 4" in their Pinch Media analytics report. Pinch Media supplies devs with info that, among other things, tells them upon what operating systems their mobile apps are running. The appearance of iPhone 4 - an ID first reported last week by The Boy Genius Report - indicates that some Cupertino engineer out there is walking around with a next-gen iPhone.

Of course - as MacRumors is quick to concede - such reports and logs aren't difficult to falsify. But the timing is just about right for test units to be out and about. Mark us down as cautiously intrigued.

Last year, the event calendar at San Francisco's Moscone Center gave the first hints as to the dates of Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which has been the coming-out party for iPhone upgrades.

This year, the same calendar lists a "Corporate Event" for June 28 through July 2. A) that vague event title is what Apple used last year to ineffectively mask its WWDC dates, B) the month is iPhone June, and C) the length of the event is appropriate for WWDC.

We see a fourth generation iPhone being announced from the Moscone keynote stage by Mr. CEO of the Decade, Best-Performer Steve Jobs on June 28.

Although next to nothing has been mooted about the next-gen iPhone, a Wednesday report by the Taiwanese market-watchers at DigiTimes gets the ball rolling. According to DT's "industry sources," the manufacturer of the 3.2-megapixel camera in the iPhone 3GS has secured orders from Apple for 40 to 45 million 5-megapixel cameras for the next-gen iPhone model which, the rumor-mongers monger, "will hit shelves sometime during the second half of 2010."

A 5-megapixel camera would be a nice step up, but note for a moment that 40 to 45 million figure - that's double the 20 to 21 million 3.2-megapixel cameras that the supplier, OmniVision, sold to Cupertino this year.

While the iPhone's popularity is certainly growing, a doubling in sales in the next year may be a tad optimistic. It's entirely possible that some of those tens of millions of digital cameras will find themselves homes in another device - perhaps the increasingly inevitable iPad. ®

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resolution != image quality

But what's the point? The image quality in the current iPhone is limited by its poor optics rather than by its image sensor. The effective resolution of my 3GS pictures is significantly worse than those from my ancient 1.5 Mpx Sony digital still camera, which I still use for technical documentation.

Unless Apple gets serious about the lens (and flash, for that matter) -- think Sony Satio -- iPhone image quality is going to remain squarely in amateurish YouTube territory.

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Tetchy

Woa!

There's some tetchy people out there, who the F needs all those pixels and a lens like a piece of crap passing next to no light and has serious aberrations built in.

But photographs! - Give me a break.

My iPhone has in more than a year taken about 100 snapshots, meanwhile my camera does that many in a short shooting session - and they're RAW too!

These cameras in whosoevers' phones are no more than a useful fringe benefit, next the whiners you expect Wharfdale speaker like output too.

It's a phone with some apps, deal with it.

Off to do dome nudies with Paris - using a big Nikon - that's a camera not a phone - don't want fuzzies

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If you knew about cameras you would know that 4mp is plenty for a phone...

As a photographer, I get very bored of the general perception that a camera is good if it has high megapixels. As above posters have commented camera quality if not just about how many MPs you have, in fact its one of the last factors in the quality of your photo.

The quality of the lens is the primary consideration, then the sensor. You can have a 20mp sensor but if your lens is made of low quality glass your photos will suck. Yeah you can print them to a massive size but they will still suck big time.

A camera phone sensor will also be very tiny and cramming ten mp into that tiny phone sized sensor will just increase noise, sharpness and actually decrease the picture quality.

A 4 or 5 mp camera will happily print your image at about A4 size without any loss in quality. Why would you want a 10mp camera phone? You want to print at A3 or 20"x16" from a phone picture? I very much doubt it, the lens and sensor would never be upto the job. in the world of cameras some manufacturers have actually used less MP on new cameras after realising its not always better.

Very bored of all the people using the megapixels as an argument to put item down. It is frankly not really valid a valid argument. Its a marketing ploy by the camera manufacturers and you my friends have fallen for it.

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