The Evolution of Camera Phones
First mobile phones revolutionized our lives and soon technology revolutionized these phones. Who could have imagined the kind of utility mobile phones have to offer these days? Seems like just yesterday when the first camera phone was launched in the market and soon enough it became a rage. All the companies revised there models and the smart phones today are the outcome of this. Today we live in a world where every phone has a camera. The product has impacted the market in such a way that today the sales of the digital camera market have fallen significantly. Let’s take a look at how did this happen.
The very first camera phone
It’s been more than a decade since Samsung launched the first mobile phone in the summer of 2009. It saw the launchpad in South Korea and was the SCH-V200. The beautiful flip cover was pretty appealing, but the high point was its 1.5-inch TFT-LCD; its digital camera had the capability of capturing 20 pictures at a resolution of 350,000-pixels. This comes out to be a 0.35 Megapixels camera. However, to get the pictures, one was required to connect the phone to the desktop.
Though between all of this, who actually produced the initial camera on a mobile phone has been a topic of debate. While some say that the first mobile with camera was manufactured by Sharp and released by J-Phone which is now SoftBank Mobile in November of 2000 in Japan. S through the computer, the J-SH04 allowed one to send the pictures electronically.
The first phone with a camera to be launched in US
The first phone with a camera in the States cost $400 ; the camera on it was of 0.3 MP. It was called the Sanyo SCP-5300 which came with a flash, self-timer, white balance control, digitally controlled zoom, several filter effects such as B&W, negative colors and sepia which can be found in the phones till date.
Audiovox PM8920 comes up with a 1.3MP camera
The summer of 2004 saw the launch of another improvised version of the camera phones which was the PM8920. The highlight of this phone was that one could share the snapshots wirelessly. It had a 1.3-megapixel camera that shot 1280 x 960 pixel resolution pictures. It was equipped with other ad on features such as clicking continuous shots and all of this was available at a price of $150.
The 2MP camera in Nokia N90
Next in the market was the Nokia N90 that was launched in 2005. This came as a revolutionary phone back in the day with a 2MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics, LED flash and autofocus.
Sony steps it up
So while Samsung and Nokia had created their market for the camera phone, Sony had been away. It all began to change when Sony Ericsson came out with their series of Cyber-shot digital cameras that broke Nokia’s market. The Sony Ericsson K800i that came out in 2006 was equipped with a 3.2MP camera that had image stabilization, a Xenon flash and autofocus.
Nokia fought back with its 3.2MP in the N73. However 2007 was the year when these phones reached its peak.
5MP in the Nokia N95
The market changed again when Samsung came out with its first 5-megapixel camera phone with a slider, however it couldn’t steal the shine of Nokia N95. This was followed by the launch of the first iPhone that could only manage to have a 2MP camera without flash or auto-focus and no ability to video record anything.
8MP from Samsung
What followed was an 8MP, the Samsung i8510 that was popularly known as the INNOV8, however failed miserably in terms of design.
Smartphones stall the camera’s progress
While everyone was busy improvising their cameras, Apple was building a stronger base and designing something beyond a phone with just a camera. What took over later were features such as a light weight body and attractive designs.
