Auto-Focus, low-light functions coming to cameraphones

Despite the fact that newer models have pumped up their megapixel count to respectable levels, most cameraphones still take pictures that make shots from a cardboard disposable camera look like they're from an SLR by comparison. But that's starting to change, and a few new technologies may actually make some of those pics worth looking at on more than just your phone's LCD. In one development, MagnaChip Semiconductor has released a new CMOS that the company says offers superior low-light performance at resolutions of up to 1.3 megapixels. Since most cameraphones lack flashes, better low-light shooting could mark a major improvement. Another advance comes courtesy of TransChip, which will demo a new system at 3GSM which the company says can perform autofocus and optical zoom tasks for cameraphones. According to the company, the system will enable 3x zoom, and autofocus using, among other technologies, the Johnson Electric's micromotor-driven NanoLens (pictured). Of course, none of this will help if you're not much of a photographer, but at least your bad pics will be in focus and well-lit.

Read - Low-Light Sensors
Read - Auto-Focus

[Josh Warner @ Feb 10th 2006 1:46PM]

The reason cellphone pics look like crap is because of the size of the lens! Anyone that has taken a college-level optics course should realize that aberrations become more prevalent as the size of the optical element(s) shrink. Think about it: pro cameras have huge lenses. If it were possible to get that quality out of something the size of a cell phone do you think they would be carrying around that much glass?

In cellphones, anything over a 1 Megapixel sensor is probably unnecessary because the lens cannot resolve any detail beyond this level. Sure, these may allow the same crappy quality pictures in low light, but the quality will not improve until the CCD gets bigger to decrease noise and the lens elements get bigger to reduce abberation.

These things are physical impossibilities on the size of a cellphone. Get a separate camera if you want to take pictures - your cellphone cannot and never will take good pictures.

Just a semi-rant from a physics major ...

[Edmund @ Feb 10th 2006 2:01PM]

I have a Sprint Samsung MM-A940, which boasts a 2.0MP camera. The lens is mounted length-wise, permitting optical zoom and a much larger lens size. Granted, the pics can come out crappy, but with a bit of reasonable maneuvering, I can take desktop-viewing quality pictures. My flickr photsteam shows as much:
www.flickr.com/photos/esoneill

all of the pics there we taken with my camera phone.

[Rusty @ Feb 10th 2006 2:03PM]

Yep, not a rant....just facts.....if you have a bigger piece of good quality glass, the picture will look TONS better. The other problem I think most all camera phones suffer from is jitter. It's hard to keep them still and not blur everything. I've had pretty good luck with my
sony s710a camera phone. 1.3 megapixel is about all you need, like you said, the lens can't resolve anything because of the size, but, with mine if you hold it VERY still, it takes pretty good web quality shots. I use mine in my line of work repairing machines. If a customer really hoses one, I snap a picture of the damage for latter use when we bill them. I've also taken some pretty good outdoor shots, but, you have to hold the thing absolutely still.
If the electronics becomes more affordable, and smaller, having antishake on a cameraphone would improve the blur, but without a better (larger) lens, it's all a waste in effort. I think the camera phone vendors are hopping on the "more megapixel" thing like the digicam guys have done in the past...and most of the uninformed boobs buying them will fall for it.

[The Kaptain @ Feb 10th 2006 2:06PM]

I completely agree with the previous poster.

The resolution of the sensor array is total irrelevant unless you have the optics in the imaging system to back it up.

I'm an electronics engineer and a couple of years ago worked for a large mobile phone company. The main array of my work was imaging systems in mobile handsets.

When evaulating sensors from various suppliers ( Toshiba and ST in my case ) I often received the sensors with coated glass optics. Despite the low resolutions ( 640 x 480 ) the images were great. However when the same sensors were placed in a system with uncoated single element plastic optics the images weren't so hot and abberations prevailed. We actually found that using an anti-IR coating on the lenses helped a lot, sadly our recommendations were ignored.

In short, give me a 640x480 sensor with decent focusable optics over a fixed focus 2MP sensor anyday!

[Tazeeyore @ Feb 10th 2006 2:10PM]

It's funny how they say it's a certain megapixel camera yet the quality of the pictures are terrible. I can use my fujifilm $100 digital camera and take a 1 magapixel picture and it will look 10 times better than those camera phones.

[raulr @ Feb 10th 2006 2:53PM]

Tazeeyore, try looking at all the comments before yours. They explain exactly why your megapixel cameraphone pictures still look like crap.

[mang @ Feb 10th 2006 3:39PM]

My sony w800 has both autofocus and a low light setting.

While it does not keep up blow for blow with consumer level cameras, the photo quality certainly looks good - see for yourself:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/musicamang/71698698/

(contains both large & small sizes)

[mang @ Feb 10th 2006 3:47PM]

engadget link parser isnt too clever:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/musicamang/71698698/

[kwongo @ Feb 10th 2006 6:55PM]

i am using sharp 903 right now and it takes good pictures. it already has autofocus and also 2x optical zoom. it takes 3.2 m pics. if anyone wants to see ask.

[CaMBoB @ Feb 10th 2006 8:55PM]

Hey all you engineers out there. Philosopher/computer nerd here... Would not the theoretical base size for an 'ideal' image reproduction system be the size of the human eyeball? Think of it... with what system do you look at a reproduced image or any image for that matter?

I put 'ideal' in quotes not only because this is a matter of perception and therefore is subjective, but I believe technological breakthroughs along the lines of this article could make up somewhat for the disparity between small and large lenses.

Just a thought.

Peace out.

[The Kaptain @ Feb 11th 2006 8:31AM]

Poster #10

It would seem that way until you realise that the human eyeball is vastly more complex than any other electronic imaging system deployed today.

As mentioned previously I'm an electronics engineer in my day job and I previously worked on the design and charaterisation of such systems. Outside of work I also have more than a passing interest in neuroscience, and enjoy reading and researching in this area. In short I think that as an engineer, I can learn a lot from examining and studying what works in the wiring of human beings. Evolution is a great designer!

But I digress, to contrast a human eyeball and a lens system with an electronic CCD / CMOS sensor array. The lens and optical systems are relatively similar, well, except for the fantastic liquid lens in the eyeball. What are very different are the image sensors, i.e. the CCD and retina. The CCD, due to it being a solid state electronics device is highly uniform and regular, with an equal number of sensor elements per unit area. In contrast the retina is quite diverse in the distribution of rods ( light sensitive but no colour ) and cones ( colour sensitive but lacking in light sensitivity ). If all our brains did was read out the image from the retina it would look like an unintelligible mess. We're forgetting the amazingness of the human brain though. This processes the output from the optic nerve and in engineering parlance, applies a sophiticated series of filters and interpolative algorithms to produce the 'image' that we 'see'.

Some interesting work is being done in this area with regards to image processing but I cannot forsee a drastic change in the actual electronic imaging 'chain' for the forseeable future.

[Duracel @ Feb 11th 2006 8:14PM]

New CMOS? Automatically FAIL! CCD is best!

[Rod @ Nov 24th 2006 3:10AM]

I am delighted to see such an intelligent discussion here. Usually all you get is a bunch of idiots complaining that certain device ONLY has 3 megapixel and how they "need" 10 megapixels because they need to crop, etc.
Indeed the human eyesight is an absolute marvel that I'd imagine has only been surpassed by medium format cameras.