Thoughts on increasing resolution
Just as we have predicted last year, the resolution of phones’ image sensors has further increased, currently 8 megapixel being the top in Europe. We already had some notes on this phenomenon in our review entitled What is a phone’s camera capable of?, so now we can really just repeat the same thing: users still believe in numbers, as on a market, that is so hard to measure on an objective scale, they believe these are the only solid foundation on which they can rely. As always we again try to get some more insight on things, and support the potential buyers of the phones in our review, with an article that can help them take a decision, relying on something else than simple numbers.
8 megapixels. This is where the European mobile photography is currently, but the question is why. Practically what does an average user use his or her phone’s camera for? They usually capture family events, memorable moments, so they do exactly what they would do with a compact digital camera, thus they feel that the advantage of a high-resolution image sensor, embedded in a phone, is that they don’t have to carry two devices with them, they can take pictures anywhere and anytime, since the phone is always there. This is great until now, but the question is what will an average user do with the resulting pictures? There are two cases: people store them on a computer until the end of times, or, if they have proper quality pictures, they print them, usually in 9 x 13 or 10 x 15 cm size. If we look at how many pixels there are on a given area we get to see that in order to print a photo of such a size, a 3 megapixel camera is more than enough, so the question is righteous: what do we want to use the additional resolution for? 5 megapixels are theoretically enough for printing A3 photos – or posters, to be more precise – so why do we have to stick to 8 megapixels? The answer is simple as daylight: this is marketing.
So we’re here, with all the available 8 megapixel handset on the market, four little gadgets. Again, Samsung is the leader, since two of the phones are from them, and besides that we have a phone from Sony Ericsson, considered the pioneer of built-in cameras, and one from LG as well, who are gaining an increasing foothold on the market. These are three names, although there are five large phone manufacturers on the market, so where are Nokia and Motorola? Well, it looks like the Finnish somehow don’t want to take part in the megapixel-war, which I might basically consider a positive attitude, but it seems that the company still doesn’t invest too much energy in improving the image quality of their phones’, I might even say that they are content with what they have and with the licensed Carl-Zeiss brand. Motorola, however, is trying, the best example being their recently launched ZN5 model, the camera being developed together with Kodak – it’s another thing that in the case of this company, which is in a quite grim financial situation, it might happen that they won’t launch any more photo phones. So this is the situation, in early 2009.
A cikk még nem ért véget, kérlek, lapozz!
