One thing I haven’t figured out is why someone hasn’t marketed a smartphone with a camera that has a decent size sensor and some good optics and a real flash. Even a $100 Nikon runs rings around the best smartphone camera. The smartphone market is so fragmented that you would think someone would try to pick up some market share with a little bit bigger heavier phone that could take some decent pictures.
There’s always the Nokia N8, if you’re OK with using Symbian.
With the Nokia/Microsoft partnership, things could get interesting with the pairing of Nokia hardware and WP7.
They have decent sensors. The issue is a good lens.
There is no substitute for a quality, large lens. They can gather more light and the optics are better.
In a cell phone size is an issue so no big lens. No way around it unless you want a cell phone the size of an SLR camera.
The iPhone 4 (from the pics I’ve seen taken on it) actually has a decent camera for well lit pics. Much better than my Motorola Droid.
There are size and power limitations to how much camera you can load on a smartphone, plus the main issue is that you are working with a lens the width of a pencil eraser. There is only so much info it can capture regardless of how powerful the processing hardware is.
The trouble is that best smartphone cameras aren’t even competitive with a low end point and shoot camera that costs less than $100 and those lens are a fraction of the size of a SLR. It would be nice to have a camera phone that could compete with a low end Canon Powershot. I don’t think the optics would have to be too big if you didn’t insist on a zoom.
I was looking at pictures I took over ten years ago with my Nikon Coolpix 900, which is 1280x960 resolution , that I bought in 99 and the pictures are better that what most people post on Facebook with their iPhones today.
On a smart phone, the camera is a convenience. It necessarily has to be as small as physically possible. Thus there is no point in comparing the quality to a digital camera which is several times the size of the entire phone.
The reviews I’ve seen, say the iPhone4 is the best of the lot, but is still worse than a cheap point and shoot.
The point I’m trying to make is that you would think the number of phones on the market someone would try to market a phone that weights a couple of ounces more and has a better lens and a real flash.
The thinking seems to be, most pics taken on the phone, will end up being seen on other phones, via MMS, Facebook or something of the sort; so no big need for high quality photos.
N8 vs. a DSLR:
http://thehandheldblog.com/2010/10/04/shootout-nokia-n8-v-canon-550d-dslr/
I know there’s at least one gallery of images that compare the N8 to the iPhone 4 (it was linked to on Engadget a while back), and the N8 camera is clearly superior to the iPhone. My N82 camera from 2007 is better than the iPhone’s.
I think the market for a chunky smartphone that took very good pics would be fairly tiny. Women (typically) are the most prolific smartphone pic takers. Sleeker will always win the day.
The Samsung Pixon range was an attempt to satisfy this combination of requirements, but wasn’t a massive success. The camera optics manifest as a bit of a bulge on the back.
The Satio takes better pictures than any low-end digital camera I’ve seen, especially in low light.
Not the best comparison. All the images are landscape shots focused out to infinity. There’s no comparison of depth of field, which is really the factor that separates average shots from great shots in any category of photography other than landscape. Can the N8 isolate the subject from the background? Any DSLR can.
Agreed. You’ll also note that the photographer just used “auto” settings on the DSLR, which pretty much cuts out most of the advantages of having a DSLR in the first place. The point to the comparison is that for situations where you’re just going to be whipping out a camera, the N8 does surprisingly well.
Here’s another gallery of N8 photos, along with links to galleries from other months:
I think you’re overstating the quality of those cheap point n’ shoots.
For example, here’s a shot from Nexus One, the phone that I own (but not a picture I took):
http://wmpoweruser.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/cameracomnexusone4.jpg
Quality looks pretty good to me. No, it’s not super high quality, but it’s from a lens that’s barely 2mm wide.
And here’s a shot from an iPhone 4:
http://dailyiphoneblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/iphone-4-camera-sample-02.jpg
Also, pretty good.
There’s a lot of decent smartphone cameras out there, but there’s also just as many crappy ones. But even more important, there’s a lot more crappy photographers. Think about all those bad pictures you’ve seen on Facebook. Would they really be that much better if they were taken with a cheap point and shoot?
That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, though. If the photos were better, we’d be able to use them for something more than MMS, Facebook, etc. It’s the photo quality that limits where the photos end up.
Maybe it’s because of all of that other stuff that folks expect to be stuffed into a modern smartphone besides a camera.
My smartphone, for instance (and mine i’s pretty much a dull-normal Android-based smartphone) contains…
A GPS unit
A WIFI transmitter/receiver
A Bluetooth transmitter/receiver
An Internet (3G in my case) transmitter/receiver
A compass unit
An accelerometer (I’m not all that certain about this one)
A level (tilt?) unit
An operating system that accepts applications (of which I’ve downloaded about thirty)
Oh, yes - it’s also a cellphone.
Say, how good is that $100 camera of yours at generating driving directions from here to the mall?
Take a look at how small the iPhone 4 camera actually is. I think given the size limitations they do a really good job. The HTC Bresson has a 16MP camera built into it but a large amount of pixels doesn’t equal a good final picture. There just isn’t the market for a bulky smartphone in order to accomodate a better quality camera.
The Pixon and N8 appear to be very interesting Camera-Phones. The Satio is a bit quirky and pricey for what it does. The Pixon actually looks more like a camera than a phone.
Reading the information has made me realize how hard it is to penetrate the US cell phone market if one of the major cellular companies doesn’t doesn’t have you in the catalog. It just doesn’t occur to most people to go out and buy their phones from anyone other than the cellular companies.
You also don’t get the free/discounted phone deals when you do that when re-upping a contract. You’d pay full retail (such as it is) price. The flip side is you don’t have to commit to a long contract.