Next-gen iPhones to get 5-megapixel cameras in 2010?

John Brownlee ()

Next-gen iPhones to get 5-megapixel cameras in 2010?

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?

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[via Apple Insider]

5 comments »

About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in iPhone, News |

  • Jeff

    I think the iPhone 3Gs camera is quite good. It’s certainly better than the Droid based on comparisons I’ve seen online. It’s also better than many other phone cameras I’ve seen.

  • http://www.toxicspark.com Andrew Macdonald

    Its about bloody time they upgraded the camera. In my opinion. it is the only thing which lets the phone down.

  • http://www.toxicspark.com Andrew Macdonald

    I also would like a flash. I was hoping to have the apple logo on the back of the phone light up. If something like that was implemented, it could also be used as the camera flash.

    That’ll probably never happen, but would look quite cool

  • http://islandinthenet.com/ Khürt L Williams

    There is more to photoquality than simply number of pixels – sensor size, pixel density, ability of sensor to detect light, etc all are factors. Cramming 5MP into the same small sensor in the iPhone will give marginally better results.

    http://www.megapixelmyth.com/?p=183
    http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm

    Why is it people always assume more is better? Our CPUs are now faster than we can use ( I don’t know any video games that use multi-core CPUs) and our cars have higher maximum speeds that we are legally allowed to drive. Then again, whoever said the American consumer was smart?!

  • Enzo

    I foresee an Apple iPhone peak soon. If you’re like me, you have had your iPhone for awhile now. Many years. Are you still that excited? See, what else can Apple put on a phone, if it already has cameras and 100,000 apps that will do the same thing forever? Sure, iCam is coming, as well as zillion megapixels, but are those revolutionary things that will make you trade every year? How many pixels do you need? After GPS, Web Widgets, cameras, pixels, flashlights, radios, GB, what else is there? A PEAK, that’s what’s out there. I know that most fanboys have their retirement on AAPL with a 27 P/E (and climbing out of control to bubblesphere), but how many more Macbooks and iPhones versions and pathetic app upgrades can you get excited about? Some may say, wow, but Apple will make money with emerging markets. Really? Do you realize that more than 50% of the Brazilian population earns only 200 USD / month? Plus 30% more are probably seniors who really don’t care much about iPhone and Macs that much? You know a peak’s coming when they start stretching iPhones into tablets. Wow, now I carry a small iPhone and a little bit larger iPhone called tablet. Redundant? Buh buh buh we can see catalogs now…and the apps are bigger. Are you serious?