Most new cellphones include a digital camera. This does not mean it’s going to be actually used: just one in 20 users prints the pictures or posts them to a website, and just one in four sends them to others attached to a message. The problems: low image quality, slow network connections and user unfriendliness. These days we’re seeing some remedies.
All market research firms agree: mobile phone cameras are under-used. According to InfoTrends, 78 percent of under-18-years-old take one or more pictures every week with their cellphones, but the numbers of those actually sending them are decreasing. Another research firm, In-Stat, found that just 5 percent of camera phone users print their pictures or post them to a website. Actually, most pictures never get out of the phone: even though 60 percent of people purchasing a camera phone intend to share pictures, just 28 percent of them end up doing so.
The researchers also agree on the reasons for the above: low picture quality, slow data transfers and the complexities of taking, editing, transferring or printing a photo using a cell phone.
Conventional wisdom would dictate that higher-resolution image sensors would improve the perception of quality: according to In-Stats, 50 percent of users wouldn’t purchase a phone with less than 2 megapixels. Actually, there are already 8-megapixel models in the market. However, as shown in the digital camera arena, pixels are not everything. Quality is affected by many other factors, from optics to image processing.
Kodak, Motorola and Texas Instruments: an all-American alliance
At the 3GSM World Congress, several companies display new technologies in the camera phones field. Kodak, a name synonymous for photos to many users, is appraching all three of the above problems: the company is introducing in Barcelona the KAC-01301, 1.3-megapixel CMOS image sensor, specifically created for cell phones. Kodak is also demonstrating how easy it is to use Motorola’s RAZR V3X phone to connect over Blueooth to Kodak’s Picture Kiosk G4 and EASYSHARE Photo Printer 500 and Printer Dock Plus Series 3 photo printers. Also, the Rochester-based company has joined Texas Instruments (TI) for making Kodak’s Perfect Touch technology available in devices based TI’s OMAP processor, which should improve both the picture quality and the devices’ ease of use.
New lenses
Other companies are focused on the optical aspects of camera phones. French company Varioptic introduces at the 3GSM its liquid lens Arctic 320 for camera phones. The company says this lens is the only autofocus, multi-megapixels one currently available. It works as the human eye, so it changes shape automatically without any mechanical drive, by applying an electrical current to modify the edge between two drops of liquid. According to Varioptic, improvements on previous lenses in thermal behaviour, power consumption and size make the Arctic 320 ideal for use in mobile phones.
Another manufacturer showing optical items at the Barcelona event is Hong Kong’s Johnson Electric. The company offers its new NanoZoom, an image module for cell phones with Tamron lens, 3-megapixel CMOS image sensor and 3x continuous zoom with silent piezoelectric drive, providing a depth up to 10 mm at a speed of 100 mm per second. The NanoZoom also uses the company’s NanoLens autofocus technology.
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