According to EE Times ("Camera phones get sexy; do users care?") Samsung has announced that it wants to push quickly to five megapixel camera phones and make digital cameras devices for professionals only. "That's our ideal," said Dong Hoon Jang, a principal engineer in the South Korean company's mobile-phone group. The article continues:
"The limiting factor is the lens and optics," said Gary Baum, senior vice president of marketing at NuCore Technology Inc., a startup that produces high-end image processors for digital still cameras. "Just as megahertz alone doesn't produce better computers, megapixels don't produce better images; you need low signal-to-noise ratios, good color balancing and superior image processing."
Lens makers face several challenges. They must produce ever-better images while shrinking their devices or at least holding the device size steady. That leads to shrinking pixel sizes and thus to less light per pixel.
"Today's VGA-class camera phones produce focused images in a narrow distance range and only under optimal light conditions. Component makers are addressing the problems at each stage of the image-processing chain. The mechanical and power issues in packing flash modules and better lenses into camera phones are proving the biggest challenges."
[Read the full story about the associated problems with lenses, flashes etc.]
The EE Times article by Rick Merritt reports in depth what was discussed at the Cameraphone Summit 2004 (1; 2).
