Mobile Phone Innovations -- Cameras

Another area of mobile phone innovation is the camera. The quality and resolution is increasing so fast that digital camera makers are finding it difficult to compete. A general search indicates that the current standard is 5 megapixels and an autofocus capability. The mobile phone has the inherent advantage of being able to send the captured image to another phone or a server for storage. Consequently, the camera feature is often referred to as MMS for multimedia messaging service since the camera feature on a phone can also capture video and audio as well as still images. Nokia announced this month the N96 which can stream video to through its DVB-H digital TV receiver. This effectively turns your mobile phone into a mobile TV.

Piezoelectric motors offer higher resolution and accuracy than electromagnetic motors improving the autofocus capability by 10x on some phone cameras.

By using semiconductor technology vendors are able to shrink the size of the camera and improve the image through signal processing techniques. ST Microelectronics is one company working on this front.

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Hall T.