The popularity of camera phones now-a-days is at an all time high. There are many reasons for its popularity, among them the major being that though the camera doesn't greatly influence the phone's price, but it widens its capabilities. In November 2000, the first camera mobile phone - J-SH04 was introduced by Sharp and J-Phone in Japan. The small CMOS camera made the phone very popular in spite of a higher price-tag and before long had a huge fan following, thus paving the way for other camera phones.
Initially, there were external cameras for phones as the manufacturers found it a bit tricky to put a camera while still maintain the thin structure of the phone. But as we advanced in technology, external cameras have been replaced by much stronger built in or integrated cameras. Most of the camera phones in the beginning had resolution of 640x480 pixel (VGA). Though the cameras were handy, many a times, pictures looks unreal and artifacts were visible due to JPEG format.
Here too the ever increasing technical know-how have made it possible to integrate high end cameras with very strong lenses. Today, a typical mid-end digital camera with 5 megapixel lens is fast loosing its ground to camera phones with even higher camera features. These days a 2.0 megapixel camera is a norm and is rapidly pushing the limits. We have 5.0 megapixel camera already hitting the market and a massive 10 megapixel camera phone in the pipeline.
The consistent growth of the
Camera Mobiles popularity is not only due to improved lens but its all round progress. Earlier it was supposedly expensive to integrate zoom in the phone. The problem was overcome with software digital zoom and more recently 'optical' zoom has also been incorporated in certain models.
Advanced options for edit after capture, timer, effects have made the camera phones a very attractive and viable option against traditional digital camera.
