Sony CEO Lets Slip That iPhone 5 Will Have 8MP Camera 176
An anonymous reader writes "During a recent interview with Walt Mossberg, Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer may have inadvertently let it slip that Sony plans to supply Apple with 8 megapixel cameras for the next-gen iPhone. While discussing the Japanese earthquake, Stringer noted that Sony's camera sensor plant in Sendai had been affected and that shipments of 8 megapixel camera sensors to Apple were subsequently delayed."
Yeah, but.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares?
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And in other news, there was news.
Sony is in bed with Apple? (Score:4, Interesting)
I care because I didn't know that Sony supplied components to Apple. Maybe I have just been living in a cave or something....but I didn't know.
And now that I DO know, Apple is on my do-not-buy list.
I hate Sony THAT much. And you should too.
Re:Sony is in bed with Apple? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yup. And Apple is a product integrator, not a component manufacturer. They don't make a single thing on their own. But they sell so many, this isn't a problem. And in fact, much of their strategy is to maximize volumes by selling only a very limited number of models of a product, and then reusing these parts as much as possible. Thus the single version of the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad each year, using many of the same parts in each.
And in fact, Apple's increasingly buying parts from direct competitors. S
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The problem is you don't know if a part comes from Sony unless it's stamped with "Sony" on them. For some parts, they don't stamp the manufacturer as there simply isn't enough room and only stamp the model number. Unless you look up every part and trace the origin, you can't be sure. This also applies to smaller parts like transistors and capacitors as well as chips.
Additionally, your particular device may not use a Sony part, but you can't be sure that the manufacturer sourced parts from Sony for that m
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I care because I didn't know that Sony supplied components to Apple. Maybe I have just been living in a cave or something....but I didn't know.
And now that I DO know, Apple is on my do-not-buy list.
I hate Sony THAT much. And you should too.
Pshaw. Apple has been every bit as evil as Sony, shitting on their customers since the 2nd gen iPod. If you had any real ethics, you wouldn't have been buying Apple products, either.
Re:Sony is in bed with Apple? (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple has been every bit as evil as Sony
No, they haven't. Not even close.
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Yes, they have. (see what i did there?)
Yes, I see that you made a claim not apparently supported by evidence. The burden of proof is on you to prove the claim, not on me to refute it. Still, I'll get things started:
# of their own customers sued or criminally charged by Apple for jailbreaking or otherwise hacking legitimately purchased devices: 0.
# of rootkits intentionally distributed with Apple software or hardware: 0.
# of documented, advertised features removed from equipment by Apple under the guise of
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I switched from Sony to Panasonic camcorders a year and a half back... but primarily because Panasonic simply made a better product. And year, part of that reason is that Sony, more than anyone, was pushing some of their corporate vision on the features of different models, rather than just doing what they could do with the technology. That ultimately kills market share... it has with Sony on many fronts, and it will with Apple too.
And those who leave probably don't come back, even when if they fix those pr
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I think what really needs to happen is pressure to break sony corp up in order to sell products in the US..
Why? I would agree with you if they were tying all their products (for example if the PS3 had features that could only be use on Sony TVs) together but they aren't.
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They didn't until now. The sensor in the current iphone was from someone else.
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Sony's a big proponent of backside illumination photo sensors. That's probably why Apple's interested -- the 1/4" CMOS sensor is just too frickin' tiny to be useful at 8Mpixel without employing nearly all of the magic tricks these days. And back illumination is one of the best ones.
They used Micron sensors for the earlier phones... don't know offhand who made the iPhone 4 sensor.
They're going to 8Mpixel because every other high-end smartphone has had an 8Mpixel sensor since last summer or so. That doesn't m
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So ... most 8MP camera phones have 5MP of information, and 3MP of blur. The new Sony sensors will use backside illumination (hehe .. backside), which will give it a maximum of 8MP.
But it's all a wank anyway, because 90% of page views will be of a 25 kP thumbnail, and the rest will be 0.3 MP Facebook photos.
(It's a sore point. My SO nags me to carry a DSLR, so she can take photos to post up for internet friends to gawk at. I *told* her that a Canon S95 would be almost as good. She doesn't care, as the DSLR m
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Damn, Sony puts parts in Apple products? Now that's one more to add to my list of reasons not to buy from Apple:
1) I play a lot of games that aren't on OSX.
2) I don't have the kind of money to spend on Macs.
3) Sony supplies parts to Apple.
4) I look good in black, but I don't look good in turtlenecks. And I hate jeans.
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You're doing it wrong, you should've already been refusing to buy Apple because of Apple, not Sony.
When Sony does evil, they do it in a 5-years-old kind of way: petty and sometimes bothersome, but if you have patience it's easily ignored. When Apple does evil, however, they do it like old politicians: they'll use every connection and leverage over the industry they have to make sure that you're still screwed, but that if you buy their products they'll make sure to use some lube beforehand.
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Sony had been supplying components and subsystems to Apple for decades. Back when I worked at Commodore, I took various Macs and Mac IIs apart, and they usually had large modules, even power supplies, from Sony. They used Sony picture tubes in their monitors in the old days (as did anyone selling a "Trinitron" tube.
This is not such a shock... the two companies have been very similar in many ways, again for decades. Their idea of product design, shooting for the high end based on marketing and reputation as
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Thank you, I thought it was just me. Slashdot seems to be approaching Gizmodo levels of news that would only be interesting to Apple fanboys. Who cares if the iPhone 5 will *shock!* have a high-end camera sensor, or about the specs of some random Apple laptop, or if iPad 2 supplies are low, or if Steve Jobs took a shit in the woods.
If Slashdot is going to bring us gadget news it should be about unusual or groundbreaking products. Not micro-coverage of the freaking Wal-Mart electronics catalog.
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"Then again, what is a article about a phone of a company that employs totalitarian control...."
That's right. Let's talk about Google instead....
Wait.
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It's going to be the same size as the current iPhone, 1/4".
As for 5-6Mpixel... the Mpixel matters not... it's the sensor site pitch and fill that makes the most difference. Today's DSLRs go well into the 20MPixel range and can continue to improve into the next few years at least. Medium Format DSLRs have been shooting 60Mpixel images, and can keep going.
But with smaller sensors, there are two problems. Each sensor site getting smaller means less sensitivity, so the only improvements are making the sensor mo
Good Lord (Score:4, Insightful)
This is news?
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In the sense that retro is chic. Besides, the 80 megapixel camera [gizmag.com] won't fit in that small a case.
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8's been kind of the high-end smartphone minimum since last summer, unless you're Apple.
BFD (Score:2)
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What you say is true only with a given sensor type/technology. As megapixels counts increase, most manufacturers manage to increase the S/N ratio at the detection and amplification stages often resulting in a net improvement in image quality. Compare yesteryear's 2 megapixel DSLRs or even medium format camera backs to today's 18-24 megapixel DSLRs. The original DSLR cameras were limited to maybe ISO1600 max and were very, very noisy, whereas with today's DSLRs if you expose properly you can shoot at ISO1600
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ps. Sadly, I have been waiting about 25 years to use that joke.
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The comparison makes sense whenever image quality is not limited by pixel count. If an iPhone still only barely achieves the image quality of a point and shoot with 3MP from 8 years ago, we can safely assume that the iPhone's bigger problem is the optics and not the sensor.
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It's a tiny cheap camera. It will have a cheap sensor and a cheap lens.
... and don't forget the dust/dirt/oil/lint/etc that will inevitably be scumming up that nice cheap arrangement.
If you don't have a lens cover or a case for it, it's not a camera worth caring about.
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Take for example the current crop of Sony 16 mp APS sensors found in the Nikon D7000 and Pentax K-5 versus any APS sensor before them, for example the 6 mp sensors that were the high iso darlings of their day.
Actually it was very true. The advances in technology may pull you forward but that doesn't change the fact that lower megapixels means that each photosite has the ability to capture more photons improving signal to noise ratio. All other things being equal a lower megapixel sensor has far better noise characteristics than a high megapixels sensor.
And lets not even get started on a resolving power of a lens that can satisfy 8megapixels on the size of a pinhead.
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"All other things being equal a lower megapixel sensor has far better noise characteristics than a high megapixels sensor...."
The iPhone 3GS had a 3MP camera. The iPhone 4 has a 5MP camera, one that's acknowledged by many to be one of the best on the market, and much, much better than the one in the 3GS.
Of course, the camera technology had improved, so all other things "weren't equal". But it also shows that that you can increase pixel counts AND increase quality at the same time. Which means that Apple cou
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Of course, the camera technology had improved, so all other things "weren't equal". But it also shows that that you can increase pixel counts AND increase quality at the same time.
The bit in bold is the bit you don't quite seem to understand. Pixel density is an instant design decision where higher = less SNR but more resolution. The other advancement of technology takes time and research. Just because the net result of a boost in megapixels and technology was positive for image quality does not mean that the increase in resolution was positive. Just that it wasn't negative enough to offset new technology. A lower resolution would still be better, especially due to the lack of decent
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"Pixel density is an instant design decision where higher = less SNR but more resolution. "
Had a longer response, but web ate it.
Anyway, the answer is not always. Read the following on backside-illumination technology....
"The ability to collect more light meant that a similarly-sized sensor array could offer higher resolution without the drop in low-light performance otherwise associated with the megapixel race. Alternately, the same resolution and low-light capability could be offered on a smaller chip, lo
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You just don't seem to get this fact of physics, Ok I may have studied photonics (or opto-electronics or whatever you Americans call it), but even my girlfriend can gra
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but the reality is while the next 8mpx sensor may be better than the current 5mpx, the next 5mpx would be even better.
But the reality is :
1) The next 8Mpx sensors can/will be better than the current 5Mpx sensors (due to BI tech etc).
2) Nobody selling devices in the same market segment will use 5Mpx sensors for their future offerings.
You just don't seem to get this fact of physics,
The facts of marketing often make the facts of physics irrelevant. ;)
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The earlier iPhones had pretty bad cameras.. basically glorified webcams from Micron, mostly. The iPhone 4 camera was the first one Apple seems to get a little serious about.
Apple is still subject to physics, at least outside of the reality distortion field. The only way they can get a substantially better image from an 8Mpixel sensor at the same 1/4" sensor size will be to go to a lower aperture, like f1.8 or so. Which means a substantially larger lens. If they stay at f3, there's not going to be much diff
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Yes. Even for larger sensor cameras if you have to shoot from a tripod with mirror lock up using the best lenses at their sharpest aperture setting and print it wall size just to see the difference there's no point to it, and you get penalized having to deal with larger files. But it's nice to be able to crop a landscape orientation shot to portrait and still have enough leftover to get a decent small print.
I was actually talking about fundamental limitations in the optical path. Things such as diffraction, manufacturing, ability to get pure enough silicon, all these limit the fundamental resolution you get. Throwing more megapixels at it doesn't solve these problems. At some point you need to start physically increasing the sensor size and the optics. To obtain extra resolution.
Meh (Score:2)
The Zune MHD will have a QSXGA, 60fps cam, not impressed. ...
Shit, did I just let that slip?
Re:Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
QSXGA
Quad Super Xtended Graphics Array... This is among the most annoying acronyms I know! Ahh!
Easier to just say "5 MP" about that, if it's the resolution others are talking about.
But with that out of my system - I wonder who in their right state of mind are actually going to print either 5 MP or 8 MP photos from a mobile phone on an A3-sized (Tabloid-sized for US citizens) sheet of paper?? It's obvious that they're once again just doing the old Megapixel race for no good reason.
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It's obvious that they're once again just doing the old Megapixel race for no good reason.
Well, I guess that's true, if you consider "big numbers impress people with money to burn" not being that good of a reason.
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I don't buy it (Score:5, Interesting)
This rumor isn't credible. 8MP is a bad idea unless you make the lens and sensor bigger. The trouble is, as you increase the megapixels you reduce the amount of light the sensor can collect. Creating significantly poorer photos in low light conditions and slightly poorer photos in normal conditions.
If you have a huge lens and sensor, like some phones and like a point-and-shoot camera then 8MP (or more) is a great idea. But apple isn't likely to do either of those.
They already made the lens and sensor about as good as they could in the iPhone 4. I think we're a long time away from seeing an 8MP iPhone camera.
Re:I don't buy it (Score:4, Insightful)
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No, Steve will convince with a wave of his hand, not unlike the Dark Lords before him, that this is exactly what you are looking for.
Pray that he does not find your lack of faith disturbing.
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Just a nitpick, but...
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Take one photo sensor site of 5um x 5um. Ok, good. Now take four photo sensor sites of 2.5um x 2.5um each. All other things being equal, we will have the same light hitting the sensor chip, and thus, four times as much light hitting that larger sensor. Let's assuming a 100% fill factor, to not make the smaller sensor any worse than it already will be.
Since our goal is to operate each photodiode in its linear range as much as possible, we can assume it usually does. Thus, the signal from that large sensor i
Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Informative)
There have been a lot of technology advancements that dramatically increase the amount of light each photosite can collect. The biggest is BSI (back side illuminated) sensors which can double the amount of light that gets captured per photosite. We are also moving to high-dynamic range, high-speed, and pixel-binning CMOS technology that can combine signal data from multiple photosites into one.
http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2011/02/sony-announces-12mp-155um-pixel-bsi.html [blogspot.com]
In general you will get better quality from a larger sensor, all things being equal, but technology has moved considerably forward. 1~2 micron photosites (that are common in cellphones) can easily handle 8MPs. But don't expect it to take the same quality as a dSLR (or even the larger sensored point and shoots).
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You do not have to make a lens that much larger to double the area. Also take a look at Nokia's phones they have very good 8MP cameras and optics on them. At this point you sound like an Apple ad. Today the Iphone 4s hardware is at best just Okay. They still have a very good display but the CPU is just okay. IOS is still a very good OS but the hardware really needs an update to stay on top including the camera.
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I disagree - the iPhone4 cpu is very good. Yes, there are more powerful phones on the market, but there are even more that are less powerful, and it is more than enough for 99% of the things people want to do at the moment on the device. Once there are more multi-core devices around then I'm sure this will change as expectations increase, but the reality is that the device is still faster in use than a lot of peoples home and office computers.
The camera is good enough to the point that I stop taking my DSLR
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which is why I said it was just okay. Not terrible but not state of the art. IOS is a good OS but even there I would say that the UI is not the best on the market. That would have to go to WebOS. The SDK is the best I have seen in the mobile space. That is the point the iPhone 4 is still a very good device. But it is not better in every category anymore. The Next Gen IPhone will have a dual core and a better camera. My bet is that it will support 1080P video as well as having a better front facing camer.
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Even the typical DSLR doesn't come with a lens that truly performs at the pixel level - at least not for consumer DSLRs.
If you spend $300 or so on a prime lens, or $1500+ on a zoom lens then you can probably get a lens that will give you a real 12MP of quality (give or take). Those lenses of course are anything but compact.
Now, if you wanted to build a camera with a prime lens that was fully integrated (no support for interchangable lenses) I'm sure you could get real 8MP quality in a smaller and cheaper p
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The rumor is completely credible.
First is the fact they mention Sony. If they were not already using a back illuminated sensor, they want one. That's Sony's big thing... they're using smaller back illuminated sensors in their consumer camcorders and competing with larger conventional sensor pretty favorably. Not crazy differences... a Sony with a 1/2.88" sensor is outperforming a JVC with a 1/2.33" sensor, and doing well against a Pansonic with three 1/4" sensors, that kind of thing. But in short, this is
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your average iPhone consumer will only know that 'more pixels' = 'better'.
Your average iPhone user will, however, quickly realize that photos suck if the sensor is too small. Apple never makes stuff to compete in checklists, they make stuff they believe will be regarded as high-quality. Apple would never slap an "8 megapixels!" sticker on the iPhone in hopes that it would appeal to more people. Apple's stuff is nearly always the worst spec'ed stuff on the market, yet it is also the most coveted and they consistently have the highest customer satisfaction in the industry. They
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Hey, finally a person who understands the real reason behind Apple's popularity! I don't understand why people on Slashdot skip over your much more obvious explanation and go right for "people buy Apple because it's a 'cool' brand even though the specs suck" That has never made much sense
1.) Apple is not trendy. Companies trying to be trendy throw designer patterns on their products or team up with a celebrity. They end up cycling said trendy product off the market in 6 months as people move on. Apple makes
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Like an antennae that is so high tech that it requires you to use a rubber band for optimum performance?
Or phone screens that are prone to develop a yellow tint?
Apple's story is full of mishaps.. Those two were introduced as revolutionary and cutting edge, and on paper they were... But then real world scenarios proved them wrong.
On the other hand, it is possible to have a decent camera in a phone, like the nokia N8 proved, and apple might do it, Just don't paint apple as the tech messiah.
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Every company's story is full of mishaps. They just have so many products that the mishaps are lost in the noise.
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They know how to put stuff together for real life.
So much so that there's almost no incidence of iPhone screen breakage and the new MacBook Pros never crash!
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Your average iPhone user will, however, quickly realize that photos suck if the sensor is too small.
Don't worry about the users. They know it won't suck, because it's 1) more megapixels, and 2) Apple.
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They're there for Facetime support. That's it.
And... (Score:2)
In other news, not a shit was given that at the interview...
Megapixels are meaningless if they aren't coupled with a larger sensor and better glass. Cheap plastic and a tiny sensor still make it a shitty camera. It's the same picture whether it's 4Mp or 8Mp. Now if they put a real Xenon flash on it, that might be something interesting.
There is more to it than that (Score:2)
The quality of the software that processes the data coming from the sensor is vitally important to the quality of the image produced.
This has been amply demonstrated by some DSLR's that use the same Sensor and almost identical quality lenses only to have a vast difference in the quality (bokeh) of the resulting image.
This is why you pay lots of $$$$ to the likes of Nikon & Canon and less to Sony especially as Sony make most of the Nikon DSLR Sensors.
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Why did you throw bokeh in there? There's a lot more to image quality that comes to mind before nice bokeh, whose quality is lens-dominated anyway.
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I don't think bokeh means what you think it does.
I'll believe it when I see it. (Score:2)
hmm (Score:2)
Here's how to tell if it's true: (Score:2)
It depends on whether or not Steve Jobs throws a hissy fit.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/00/07/19/apple_turns_cold_shoulder_towards_ati_at_macworld.html
New lessons need to be learned (Score:2)
It's taken something like 7 or 8 years for compact camera manufacturers to realize (or, perhaps, "come to grips with" is better) that shoving more megapixels into a tiny sensor doesn't give the user better photos. Unfortunately the phone manufacturers apparently haven't learned that lesson.
Actually I am probably being unfair. They're just giving the customers what they want, and - even here on Slashdot - I still see people saying things like "my phone has a 6MP sensor, so it's better than an iPhone's camera
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Re:LOL. nokia n8 has 12mpx, pixon has 12mpx since (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize, that other than raw numbers, megapixels have very little to do with final quality?
Re:LOL. nokia n8 has 12mpx, pixon has 12mpx since (Score:4, Informative)
You do realize that cellphone sensors are limited by diffraction so while you can resolve finer detail through unsharp masks, physics does limit the usable resolution of optical sensors. Making things worse, the need for anti-aliasing filters will further soften the photos. APS-C DSLRs have reached the point where they are diffraction limited to f/8.0 and yet while the megapixel race has slowed down a bit, it has not yet ended. If you need a 100% crop from the newest APS-C cameras, it requires minor to moderat sharpening during postprocessing. As the sensor size decreases the circle of confusion becomes relatively larger as the photo sites ("pixels") decrease.
Unless they find some way to increase the lens size (which will require bending space-time) the megapixel race is utterly pointless, because the resulting photos will either appear softer and softer, or more and more artificial due to requiring more and more sharpening.
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Making things worse, the need for anti-aliasing filters will further soften the photos.
Soften? Pastelify, blur, undetailify, and just generally fuck up are terms that much better describe what noise reduction filters in typical cell phone cameras do to pictures. :(
I want a 1.3-2MP sensor in my next phone...
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Doesn't sound like a big issue -- I've been bending space-time around me since the day when I was born.
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Maybe they could use a lens which pops out of the back of the camera when in use?
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Supposedly about a 1/2" sensor (you have to know about the history of videcon tubes and other ancient video stuff to know about sensor measurements... anyone who just gets out a rules and measures will get the wrong answer). That's not bad. Higher end P&S cameras like the Canon G12 or Nikon P7000 usually rock something like a 1/1/7" sensor.
Moving upward, the Panasonic and Olympus DSLR, EVIL, and ILCC's sport 4/3" sensor... APS-C, APS-H, and full frame 35mm move up from there. Looking in the other direc
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We're already at the point in APS sensors where diffraction limits are kicking in at f8... that's APS-C at 18Mpixels. We don't see it yet, though, because they're all doing Bayer interpolation, which increases the effective circle of confusion by about a factor of 9. So there's still some practical resolution to be had in APS sensors, but it's not going on forever.
The ironic thing here is that, assuming Sigma/Foveon ever get their act together on an RGB (three sensors per pixel site) senor chip with a moder
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3 years ahead in camera technology, 6 years behind in smartphone OS technology!
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Meh, phone cameras suck in general, high mega-pixels are mostly just for advertising (the optics are too poor to really take advantage of them). Apple has enough other good points to advertise on and enough fanboys that they really don't need to play the game of inflating a headline spec while actually reducing what that spec is thought the represent (put too many megapixels on for your optics and you just increase noise without increasing details).
What apple really got right was the interface and in partic
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I doubt very much that Sony is going to be involved in the naming conventions of future iPhones.
The Sony guy saying "iPhone 5" is just him trying to describe the next generation in absence of an official name.
For all we know, they might not even use numbers. Often, when it gets to version 4 or 5 you start to see different naming conventions come into play, like "NT" or the names of big cats or something. At some point, just incrementing the number starts to lose meaning and doesn't provide enough differen
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Often, when it gets to version 4 or 5 you start to see different naming conventions come into play, like "NT" or the names of big cats or something.
So we're probably looking at the iPhone Tabby?
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I doubt very much that Sony is going to be involved in the naming conventions of future iPhones.
The Sony guy saying "iPhone 5" is just him trying to describe the next generation in absence of an official name.
Actually, he neither said anything about "iPhone 5" nor about 8 megapixels. http://www.9to5mac.com/59019/howard-stringer-says-sony-image-sensors-delayed-for-apples-ipad/ [9to5mac.com]:
Paraphrased: “Our best sensor technology is built in one of the (tsunami) affected factories. Those go to Apple for their iPhonesor iPads. Isn’t that something? They buy our best sensors from us?”
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Nokia defaulted on the game the day they partnered with Microsoft on Windows Phone 7. Nokia personnel and shareholders just haven't felt the effects of their loss yet.
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Shareholders did, Nokia's stock took a noticeable dive after they announced the partnership. See here. [yahoo.com]
Re:When will /. fanbois get a clue? (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm glad you agree re: Nokia at least. Unfortunately, it seems that to some /.'ers who happen to have mod points today, calling a spade a spade regarding iPhone competitors is trolling.
So, in the world that today's mods live in, iDevice competitors have actually got their act together? Even if they could manage to come out with something with higher specs in all features than a given iDevice, there's still inertia to deal with. But what's amazing is they come out with inferior phones and pads, and the
Re:"Oops" (Score:4, Insightful)
8 megapixels is nothing special, what is interesting is if the sensor can provide good pictures.
You can get great pictures with a 4 megapixel sensor. The noise level of the sensor and the optics is a lot more important.
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8 megapixels is nothing special....
And it looks like there still won't be an optical zoom since the Xperia-Pro only has digital zoom [sonyericsson.com]
And don't tell me they can't put an optical zoom in an iPhone: the Sony DSC-T7 was only 14.8mm and had a 3x optical zoom way back in 2005 [dpreview.com] while the iPhone 4 is 9.3mm [apple.com]. I'll gladly sacrifice 5.5mm for a 3x optical zoom (assuming technology hasn't advanced since 2005)
Digital zoom is a joke, I'd don't care if they sell a 50 megapixel iPhone I'd trade it all for a good 3 megapixel with a 3x optical zoom.
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If you want zoom, get a real camera.
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Sure, you would. But when was the last time you recall Apple making even one concession to function over form? They'll put the 8Mpixel sensor in because that's the largest any reputable company makes in 1/4", same size as the iPhone 4 camera.
The camera in a smart phone is a useful tool for scanning, augmented reality, videophone, and "better than nothing" snapshots. Apple needs 8Mpixel because other top tier smartphones have had them since last summer, and more than ever, Apple actuqlly has to compete wi
MOAR MEGAPICKLES! (Score:3)
If there's areas on a computing device that you can't really improve, and you still want people to plod along the upgrade path, just bump the numbers - like in the ca. 2000 "Mhz wars".
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I just replaced an 8Mpixel camera ith an 18Mpixel camera, and the image quality is dramatically better. That's because these are DSLRs with large (APS-C) sensors. On a much smaller sensor, you're already diffraction limited... more pixels will do nothing to deliver a sharper image. Before you factor in the blurring due to Bayer interpolation, a 1/4" sensor is already diffraction limited at f2.8 and up... at 2Mpixels. Increasingly, sensor resolution boosts are just "marketing bits".
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All this talk about megapixels is mainly just marketing for clueless people.
Even a high quality lens won't help if it is small (Score:2)