Friday, May 14, 2004
Qualcomm's 6 Megapixel Camera Chips
Posted by Jason Dunn in "NEWS" @ 10:00 AM
"Mobile phone technology provider Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq:QCOM - news) on Wednesday unveiled a new line of chips with ultra-high resolution camera features and said it was making inroads in advanced new markets. In a volley of announcements coinciding with the company's spring Wall Street analyst briefing here, Qualcomm introduced the first of its "7000" series, all-in-one chips that offer up to 6-megapixel cameras and full-motion camcorder recording. Six-million pixel image quality would make cameraphones based on Qualcomm chips competitive with the most advanced digital cameras being sold in consumer markets worldwide."
Mere hours ago I was commenting on the lack of image quality in cameraphones, and now we have this announcement. 6 MP on a phone? Higher resolution is one thing, but what about the image quality? I've yet to see a photo from a camera that looks decent, regardless of resolution. They all look like they're stuck in the world of 1997 digital cameras, which is not a good thing. Another thing to consider is the storage requirements of a 6 MP JPEG image - you'd need quite a big of memory for it to be practical, and forget about sending that over MMS. Ultimately I think this is moving in the wrong direction - if people could get a high-quality 2 MP image that would make a decent 4x6 print, I think they'd be perfectly content. For those of you that use camera phones, what do you think about this?
Mere hours ago I was commenting on the lack of image quality in cameraphones, and now we have this announcement. 6 MP on a phone? Higher resolution is one thing, but what about the image quality? I've yet to see a photo from a camera that looks decent, regardless of resolution. They all look like they're stuck in the world of 1997 digital cameras, which is not a good thing. Another thing to consider is the storage requirements of a 6 MP JPEG image - you'd need quite a big of memory for it to be practical, and forget about sending that over MMS. Ultimately I think this is moving in the wrong direction - if people could get a high-quality 2 MP image that would make a decent 4x6 print, I think they'd be perfectly content. For those of you that use camera phones, what do you think about this?
