We didn't doubt it for a second (okay, maybe
one second), but Sony's so-called
Idou is for real. Though, we wouldn't go memorizing that name or anything, 'cause SE has plans to change it to something more commercial before summer. At any rate, the touchscreen-heavy handset -- which will run Symbian Foundation at launch -- does indeed sport a 12.1 megapixel shooter (which was hinted at last
November), which sort of makes the also-just-official
Samsung Memoir seem a bit dated already. It's funny too, as the only dozen megapixeler we were
actually expecting at this show was
from Samsung. We're still waiting on the minutiae, but we do know that it will pack a 3.5-inch panel (640 x 320 resolution; no word on capacitive or resistive) and "full media consumption," a phrase we're still struggling to digest. More as we get it!
posted Feb 15th 2009 1:49PM
i'll take 2
I never thought i'd say this, but its gonna take more than 12.1 megapixels to kill the iphones 2 . That is a very true statement. Ill prove it.,still waiting.,still waiting. No zero to 1 million in 72 hours record being broken here. You see i proved it already. Seriously who gonna drop $600 on this ????
,especially here in the usa. Exactly no one.,Another failed attempt to dethrone iphone.,NEXT.,
first
uhmm...nooooo
You are doing it wrong, Michael.
People going strangely nuts over "12 megapixel" in 3, 2, 1...
What is the point of a twelve megapixel cameraphone? My DSLR is 10 megapixels and I have never needed any more. It just seems like a pointless marketing scheme to me.
Furthermore, your DSLR has large lenses with limited focal length ranges - and even with lenses that cost as much as this entire phone will, physical factors and technique limit the real sharpness of your images to less than 10 true Mpxl except at certain f-stops. Oh, and the DSLR's sensor is probably about 2/3 the size of a real 35mm film negative. I have a 10 Mpxl camera (Nikon D200) and I can personally attest that the utmost care has to be taken to get maximum performance from the camera, even with top-tier lenses.
ANY cameraphone which uses a single, fixed lens smaller than a US dime will be diffraction limited at laughably small resolutions. We're talking 2, maybe pushing 3 Mpxl if it's a particularly good lens given the constraints. Any more pixels simply capture diffraction effects; you get precisely zero additional sharpness by putting more pixels behind a piece of crap lens.
Furthermore, cramming 12 million pixels into a sensor measuring a few millimeters in each dimension means terrible noise performance. This is particularly true as sensitivity gets ramped up, so this thing is an absolute joke for any use except in broad daylight.
Moral of this story? Sony is flexing their marketing E-Peen here, so they can claim they have the camera with the highest number of pixels. Nevermind that those pixels are effectively unusable, and because of the noise performance actually will turn out performing WORSE than if they'd put a 3 Mpxl sensor in there instead.
If you fall for this crap, you deserve to have your money taken away.
@Josh
Exactly, thank you for making that point. Too many idiots just eat up all this marketing BS. The sensors on ALL camera phones are minuscule compared to even the lowest of the low-end digicams, and the "optics" are just pathetic, so more pixels are probably just going to add noise to the image..
@Josh, those phone cameras you can't even focus correcly, night shots are a nightmare.
Guys im tearing right now... this is why I LOVE engadget.
12MP is rather useless... A simple 5MP with a real capacitive flash that doesn't drain the battery would be more useful.
"Do you like this phone?"
Idou
ZING!
Nice!
Great!!
epic zing!
This is not Sony, it is Sony Ericsson. The company's headquarters is in Sweden not Japan.
This is not Ericsson, it is Sony Ericsson. The company's headquarters is in England not Sweden.
Thanks captain Obvious, i was so confused before you shed some light on the situation!
What are you doing here Mr. Buzz Killington?
No it's in Lund Sweden, just 500m from where i'm sitting.
Lund is where they're incorporated.
London is where their headquarter is located.
http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/corporate/company/aboutus/contactsandaddresses
I want to see it in action and get some more info on the specs before I pass judgment. The 12mp camera is nice, but I've found that because the sensors in camera phones are so small the images they produce just don't come close to "real" cameras of the same MP, so its hard for me to get hyped about the phone's MP count.
See my response to the second comment in this thread for the physical reasons why the observations you have personally made are completely correct.
Sensors larger than 3 Mpxl are purely for marketing to idiots when attached to a cellphone.
Capacitive or Resistive?
BOTH!!
"we do know that it will pack a 3.5-inch panel (640 x 320 resolution; no word on capacitive or resistive) "
Try reading the article next time.
640x320? Maybe 640x360?
Sn1per, dont be a jerk, he just may have missed that.
@sn1per:
Try realizing that they have the ability to edit a post after reading what people have commented about. I didn't miss anything.... what a tool!
Yeah just what we needed more pixels crammed onto a half postage stamp size sensor. I hope they can make it shoot 3MP images with summed pixels. Better than noise all over the image.
The need to make this a Cybershot phone. With one of those new 1GHz mobile processors.
Teh ult1mate phoeN!!!
idou in greek meens "here"!
I first read "in geek" that would have made sense too
i just mentioned it....because the article says "we wouldn't go memorizing that name"...
The article clearly intends to state that if the name doesn't include A, P, P, L, E all in one name, they will not even try to memorize that name, no matter how easy it is to remember.
please, no trolling here Sood.
More specs plzzz...if this comes out good, it could replace my P1i :)
my god, its actually quite beautiful. and whats with all these weird phone names? "memoir"? "reese"? and now something i cant even pronounce! ( I-do? )
At least those names are better then WX856993/987, with the market so saturated mobile devices now need something at least semi-recognizable.
It looks like an Xperia X1 without a sliding keyboard.
They should have named it X2.
:D
I think they'll keep the Xperia name for Windows Mobile devices.
@neil
SE said that Xperia devices wouldn't just be WinMo, so who knows?
look fancy! but who needs over 8mp? Are you really gonna blow up your phone pics?
Maybe it will appeal to the upskirt website providers?
12MP from such a small lens is nothing special. It's like taking a low resolution picture and blowing it up 50x it's size.
Well, well... Mobile World Congress is definitely getting off to a good start! I'm looking forward to reading through pages of new phone goodness after I get home from school every day. As for the Idou, I think it's really going to be a successful feature phone if it comes here to the US in a reasonable amount of time... Just a couple minutes ago I was thinking of revolutionary the Memoir's 8 megapixel cam was going to be in a phone. But this phone's 12.1 mp cam mops the floor with Samsung right now (and just about every point-and-shoot on the market right now (my phone has a 1.3mp my point and shoot has a 7mp)). I'm really excited to see mobile phones catching up with digital point-and-shoot cameras....I think it's about time to consolidate those markets. I just hope that it comes with some good Cybershot cam functionality built-in, since Sony's always had really nice cams with awesome functionality. Another thing that really excites me about this one is that it's going to be marketed as a Walkman phone, rather than a Cybershot phone.... so rather than the entire focus being centered around that first-in-class cam, it will also have a killer mp3 player inside. Hoping to see this come to AT&T around beginning-mid summer! I've always really rooted for Sony Ericsson to do well. Good for them!
Gotta love it. Dupe consumers thinking that 12 MP is soooo much better than 4 or 8. All this will do for most people is slow down uploads of crappy arms length self portraits which will be ultra-compressed in any case for their Facebook sites. It's the equivalent of a penis enlarger. If you want a 12+ MP camera, get an SLR.
Do you mean DSLR?
nice comment!
My old k800i took better photos (night especially!) than my current n95 8gb.
it wasn't just the xenon flash, i could turn it off and take really good photos in low light (with the k800i) the n95s camera is horrible in low light and its flash is nothing special compared to the k800i :)
I was thinking of getting the c905 but now i would an Idou!
And this guy is the exact type of customer they are trying to go after
"12 megapixels! OMFG IT MUST BE LIEK 6x BETTER THAN THE IPHONES CAMERA OLOLOL"
It kinda looks like my LG Viewty.... both the body and buttons. The same with the screenshot in cameramode.
This looks awesome, if only I had the money..
When can idou? :->
Is it me, or do the 'real' phone companies like Sony Ericsson, Nokia, etc. just not get what people really want? Or am I the only one who doesn't get the hots for a device that physically looks pretty much identical to any other touchscreen-based phone they've released in the past 2-3 years, coupled with a camera that screams high megapixel count but will never ever get the same results as an actual camera with decent hardware?
I mean, Palm at least figured out a way to get some new things going.
Judging by Nokia's, and to a lesser extent Sony Ericsson's, marketshare - yes, they do know what people want.
I'd speculate that people DON'T know what they want though. :)
12.1 megapixel with tiny sensor, FAIL! Symbian, FAIL! Whack name, FAIL! Idou, FAIL!
Your comment, FAIL!
Hurrr huurrrr 12 megapixel durrr bad quality derp durr small sensor DURRR
And yet...I don't see a 3.5mm headphone jack... What is your damn problem Sony with your proprietary jack?!
Why are they still using that crappy SE port? No usB? FY Sony.
12 mp in a phone?! how completely worthless, the number of megapixels does not matter its the color and lenses that matter, that said a professional photographer with a dslr or film camera and a good eye a nice flash and maybe some lights is the only one who needs 12 mega pixels. Idiots with cell phones taking 12 mega pixel cameras are just wasting my bandwidth and hard drive space, images of this size need more than just a nice ccd!
And how do you know it's just the MP they've bettered? Have you even used one of the 8MP phones? They fare quite well, actually.
Even the best aps-c dslrs max out at 10 or 11 megapixels, and that's cameras intended for $1000 lenses, with a sensor 45262634563546345x bigger. They don't go beyond that because it harms image quality.
Just too, too stupid. Optimum for this sensor size is around 3 megapixels, maybe 4 at most.
What will be your guess on how much this will cost? $900?
Is that 1seg Tv?
These are great if you want a camera then a cell phone but if you want to upload the pictures a lot of sites won't be happy with the size obviously. Nonetheless I'd be interested to see if how our product Midprofile for eBay works on this phone. It will have to use 640X480 photos to meet eBay guidelines for new listings (thats what the application does, new eBay listings from a mobile) but you could also include a Youtube video with the listing taken right on this phone and that would be pretty cool to see..
http://www.midprofile.com
What's up with all the camera nerd buzz kills??? I thought this was pretty exciting.
I never thought i'd say this, but its gonna take more than 12.1 megapixels to kill the iphones 2 . That is a very true statement. Ill prove it.,still waiting.,still waiting. No zero to 1 million in 72 hours record being broken here. You see i proved it already. Seriously who gonna drop $600 on this ????
,especially here in the usa. Exactly no one.,Another failed attempt to dethrone iphone.,NEXT
Oh!! Finally a real Iphone Killer!!
I'll take 2....
Wow a 12 mp cam with a needle size lens what a waste of time....
I think I want it...so nice...Maybe I'll post it on my blog
http://www.ur-techie.com/
Well thank you, I guess I'll-do-u too.
One gazillion megapixel in a sensor smaller than my pinky finger nail is going to produce some truely disgesting images.
I want to throw just by imagining the noise pattern.
*throw up*
Wow, in the midst of a million WinMo phones being pumped out, it's great to see that we may have an alternative. The fact that it runs a variant of Symbian is already a score one in my book (Android would be preferred, but it isn't doing so well thus far), and a nice high res (capacitive, god help me if they give us yet another piece of crap resistive) screen just seals the deal.
As for the camera, whatever. Three mpx or 25, it doesn't matter much to me; as people have mentioned, it is almost impossible to take advantage of 12 mpx with such a small sensor. My N95's 5-mpx cam doesn't even produce images that are too great...this whole megapixel race is just for novelty purposes imo, and possibly used as an excuse to jack up the price a bit.