I’m sure this is a very grand advance in miniaturization, but I’m afraid the results may be of questionable quality. 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?
i’m not sure what the fascination with 1080p video on a phone is…it would be awesome, obviously (although a major flash-memory hog), but if you are that serious about video and/or pictures, wouldn’t you be carrying your real camera/camcorder? and if you’re REALLY that serious, wouldn’t you have a spattering of lenses to go with your real camera? maybe if they came out with a phone with Micro 4/3 attachments for lenses this could work. i just don’t get it, and obviously Devin doesn’t either. good post.
I’m totally with you guys, no doubt about it, but this just shows how lazy people can be. They market the shit out of lazy people because they are a huge percentage of the population of a country. It’s the lazy people who want everything only half and don’t care about getting something done right. The company’s just keep giving them a little bit and keep telling them it’s a lot.
Haha its so true!
Could you define a “slow” lens? Do you mean a low f-stop number, or what? To the best of my knowledge, cell phone cameras use fixed-focus lenses, so there’s no lag while waiting for the focus mechanism (there isn’t one), and the speed of light is a constant, so that can’t be it.
i mean they don’t get a lot of light, not the autofocus thing. But many camera phones are using autofocus these days. With 14MP you better hope it isn’t a fixed lens! Great for spy cameras, not good for real cameras.
oh thank you for that post!
while other gadget sites (none mentioned) are mentioning this chip as an incredible advancement we have at least one realistic person here that knows at least the basics of digital image processing..
Common sense prevails occasionally,
let us hope this thing just goes into those niche devices
where the hardware and implementation costs are not
questioned.
To see this touted and implemented with the requisite
software/firmware/processing overhead just to notch up
a product’s image would be an instant ‘do-not-buy’ recommendation.
Cheers to the clear-perception crowd
PS – yes, let us have high-speed video instead !!
Good post – what I’d really like is for someone to put a GSM phone into an Olympus Pen camera or Lumix LX3… :)
Satio, not idou.
The company will always release a sensor its up the market to choose. You have to study about the details before you write here. Its an 1/2.33″ sensor do you think mobile phones will take this kind of big sensors in their phone?