Mobile Telephones

I’m sure this is a very grand advance in miniaturization, but I’m afraid the results may be questionable. Omnivision has announced a new sensor for mobile phone cameras that will take 14MP photos and do 1080p video at 60FPS. As far as I’m concerned, this is bad news. Cameraphone lenses are slow and of very low quality, and the tiny sensor size means both bad low light performance and bad clarity due to insanely small pixel pitch.

And the video will have to be low bitrate to accommodate the lack of storage on most phones. 1080p video at 1Mbps? It’ll be like watching an HDTV smeared with vaseline. Why not make your sensor or phone do something useful, like take good pictures in low light, or do high-speed video?

Phone-camera hybrids like the Idou are still pretty rough. Let’s focus on getting the devices right, then we can add resolution if it’s really necessary, all right?

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