Samsung's 12 megapixel M8910 Pixon12 cellphone tries to make your camera obsolete

Yes, folks, that day you've been so eagerly awaiting is nearly here. Soon you won't have to suffer the agony of pixel envy on your cellphones thanks to Samsung's M8910 Pixon12 and its whopping 12 megapixel sensor, capturing light through a 28mm wide-angle lens like that in the Nokia N86 (which has a miserly eight megapixels on tap). Sammy's handset has been put through its paces ahead of release, stacked up against the likes of a Canon A620 and a 350D SLR. The phone does quite well, producing images as good or better than its compact competition, but we're not quite sure we agree with the assessment that it "can reach the detail resolved by a true DSLR" -- at least, not in this batch of images. We want to believe, though, we really do; those SLRs are heavy, and we're not a particularly strong bunch.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 26th 2009 12:44PM]

@Robin Jacobs: That's not the point, the point is sending pictures to someone. Standard MMS size is 600KB. My 2MP LG Xenon occasionally produces pics larger than 600KB, and they have to be resized before I can send them. A 12MP camera on a cellphone will easily produce 3-5MB images, which will either have to be cut way down in size to send (negating the point of 12MP), or you'll have to wait until you get home to offload the pictures like any other camera (negating the ability to immediately share).

[paul34 Posted Jun 26th 2009 1:51PM]

Not to be picky peter, but I hope the camera apps on all serious camera phones start to improve much more - that is to say, they should launch nearly instanteously, like a Canon digicam bootup. Can't tell you how many moments I've missed due to the eternal lag of doing _anything_ on my 1st gen iPhone I got about 2 years (1 year? Don't remember). If I had money I'd get another phone by now.

[paul34 Posted Jun 26th 2009 1:56PM]

I looked at the pictures. While they're certainly good, I'm still puzzled as to why they're not quite "there" yet. And unfortunately this isn't what I've been "waiting for." Still doesn't match the quality given by those SLRs or really even a simple point and shoot.

I've wondered. For years they've tried stuffing a camera into a cellphone; what about the other way around? There are plenty of slim point and shoots on the market right now. How about putting a cellphone into that? That way you can get a "real" camera in there and take decently focused and noise-free images, at least at the level of a simple but quality point and shoot.

Is it a durability issue? If so, there must be some way of thinning out the newer "ruggedized" digicams on the market and still getting a phone in there. I'd be willing to get a phone a few MMs thicker if it meant having a camera with good quality. Maybe it's a battery issue? Not sure what the main hangup is in doing phone --> camera rather than the normal other way around.

Also, it could mean far better boot up times for the camera apps, as I mentioned in the previous posts.

[looselycoupled Posted Jun 26th 2009 3:45PM]

"can reach the detail resolved by a true DSLR" "

That is total bullshit. The sensor, lens, and processing hardware are far from a good DSLR. Similarly, with a sensor that size and 12 Mpixels on it, the low light performance will be horrendous.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 20th 2009 4:20AM]

The Canon D mark 3 SLR has a CMOS Sensor the Pixon is A CCD and that makes a difference when comparing the MP of a sensor.