The camera in the iPhone is pretty crummy, even when compared to the constabulary of terrible camera sensors installed in other smartphones. When the iPhone 3G came out with a 2-megapixel camera provided by Aptina, the competition was boasting 3.2MP, and when the iPhone 3Gs matched that ante thanks to a sensor from OmniVision, other phones raised the bet to 5.
So there’s reason to believe a report from Taiwan’s Digitimes that Apple’s forthcoming iPhone will again boost its megapixels to match the likes of the Motorola DROID, which has a 5MP sensor. According to their sources, OmniVision is set to supply a 5-megapixel camera for the next-generation iPhone, due to arrive in the second half of next year.
In all honesty, adding more megapixels to the iPhone isn’t really going to do much to improve its image quality: in fact, due to the size restrictions of smartphone camera sensors, cramming more megapixels into a chip tends to just increase the noise. Still, since the camera industry’s been victorious so far in making megapixels as erroneously synonymous with “better image quality” in the minds of consumers, Apple needs the five-megapixel bullet point on the box of the next iPhone to seem (but not be) competitive with the likes of the latest Android phones.
Personally, though, I’d take a better lens and a flash over more megapixels. And how about a front-mounted VGA camera for video calls while we’re at it?
[via Apple Insider]
