Altek crams a dozen megapixels of wishful thinking into T8680 cameraphone
By Tim Stevens 
posted Aug 4th 2009 9:27AM
posted Aug 4th 2009 9:27AM
[Via GSM Arena]
posted Aug 4th 2009 9:27AM
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Netbook revenue is up 264 percent from last year, and has contributed to an overall lowering of the average PC cost by 19 percent. The average netbook costs about $300.
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Yeah but it looks like a lot of other phones which I never liked.
Moto called, they want their d-pad back.
I wish my Tilt had a decent camera w/ flash.
12MB bay be overkill.... 5 would suffice no?
The FM receiver seems cool... especially when you're away from your office/home.
Enadget please stop referring to these as "Camera phones"
Clearly they are just a CAMERA with a phone slapped into it as a second thought.
So these are in essence a PHONE-CAMERA
LOL!!!!
I'm one of the people who rarely use a zoom function.
3x zoom is pretty standard stuff in a conventional point and shoot, so I can see people using the zoom regularly. Personally I'd take a 6MP sensor with better optics over a 12MP with crappy optics any day.
i have a question for the more knowledgeable of you.
at 12mp, with a 3x optical zoom, would i be able to zoom in and crop twice as much as a 6mp 6x optical zoom in iphoto and end up with the same detail?
(i.e. take a picture zoomed in on 6 of 12 people with the 6mp, but capture all 12 with the 12mp and crop in on the same 6 people and end up with the same quality)?
You'd get better quality with a 6MP cameraphone than a 12MP cropped, because the sensor is the same size. More megapixels means each little sensor is that much smaller, and this leads to more noise in the picture and the lighting needs to be brighter.
Don't worry about megapixels, just compose your shots the best you can, and if possible, don't use a camera phone.
Also, your comparison would have to be with a 3MP vs. a 12MP, since these are two-dimensional. The shot at 2x zoom would have half the width and half the height, or 1/4 the area, of the other shot.
But to get to what I think is the meat of the question, the image resolution would be roughly the same if you did this. But I'd recommend against planning to heavily crop photos later, when you can just get in closer at the moment you take the picture.
thanks, joe.
i'm still quite new to digital. having a hell of a time even trying to figure out what resolution/bit depth to scan in my existing prints (most 4x6) to equate to my 6mp camera (with a great 10x optical zoom, btw).
Actually, at 12mpx, you will be able to zoom into more details and less loss than a 6mpx, but that has to depend on the format the photo is taken in.
For those who claims they cannot see the difference between a 3mpx and a 12 mpx photo, please enroll in a digital photo editing course and register yourself with the nearest optometrist.
I would enroll the lens to a optometrist.
The camera phones usually have such a bad lenses that at 12Mpx 50% or more of pixels are garbage. Even P&S cameras strugle above 10MPx and the manufacturers know it.
Just look at test photos in sites like dpreview. Get the max enlargement and look at corners. You can see coordisopersion, loss of contrast etc. The lens is such a limiting factr that 12MPx figure is just to bambooze customers. Optimist in me hopes that one day customers stop to stare at megapixels and start to think about imagequality but the pessimist in me knows that it wont happen until somebody invents a reliable way to measure it and use in advertisements.
Sizewise this phones lens looks big enough to 10MPx but I doubt the quality is enough. The names Zeiss and Schneider Kreuznach aren't there just for getting some credibility. They make good lenses and it shows. This probably inhouse product and that will too show.
So before buying this or any other camera look at test shots. Use different enlargments and decide when the image starts to look bad. Most of these cameras start to show compromises at 4MPx.
"unnecessarily" ?? well maybe you don't see the point, but many of us people need a high res cam on them and a phone, and don't "necessarily" need a 3G connection to send all of our pics in the cloud, especially when the pics are huge. i think this is a great idea, and I might switch my actual phone for this.
anyways, not all people have the same needs, so there is definitly a wide public for that phone.
I think you just want a high megapixel count for bragging rights, because I can guarantee you that you will be able to take much better pictures with a 3MP DSLR than a 12MP cameraphone. What on earth are you doing where you "need" 12MP of resolution out of a cameraphone? Cramming more pixels on the same size sensor doesn't give you a better picture. If you really did have a need for a high quality camera on you at all times, you'd probably know better than to consolidate that into a phone.
12 MP actually is not just unnecessary in this case, it actually will reduce the quality of the pictures. The sensor will be the same size as it would if the camera were 3MP or 6MP, just with a whole lot more, uhh... pixels, making every little sensor on there that much smaller. This means NOISE. Lots and lots of grainy, nasty digital noise. Especially in low light. Forget about using this thing anywhere but in broad daylight.
Right, there are many mis-educated customer who believe higher mega pixels means better image quality. But that's okay, I believe this camera will capture image better than most phones. However, a camera-phone should be able to send photo straight from the phone, what's the point otherwise?
pardon me but where would you send such a big photo to?.... Your blog? Or your Twitter?
Personally I download all my photos into my PC before sending for public consumption. Mis-educated?... Boy! Are you guys misguided.
Hm, I will take my 6 MP DSLR over any camera phone, point and shoot or bridge camera with 12 MP. Any day.
That being said, this thing does make more sense than all the other camera phones out there, wouldn't be surprised if it is the best camera in a phone on the market, mainly because it should have a bigger sensor and a better lens.
well then, we all might as well take pictures with a 1.3MP, that should be enough.
Do you really understand how much detail can be recorded in 1.3 MP? I wonder why no one complains about facebook's ~ 240K pixels limits.
No, we might as well look at other aspects of a camera, like sensor size, focus system, ISO quality, and most importantly, the lens itself.
But if you take a look at a photo scaled to a 1440x900 monitor, that's about 1.3MP. 1080p HD video is 2MP. When DSLRs first hit the market, the pros were shooting for magazines at 3MP. The quality of a photo has very little to do with the number of pixels once you get above 2 or 3MP.
Guys, before you bash this phones camera capabilities, don't forget that it has a 1/2.33" sensor, which is a normal size for a point and shoot camera. It also has a real lens, probably also taken out of a compact camera. And a real flash (come on, many P&S don't have huge flashes). I don't think the image processor will be as good as you will find it in a branded point and shoot, but then again no camera phone has a really good processor. I expect this thing to deliver quality nearly as good as with a REAL camera, it should definitely beat ANY camera phone hands down (except perhaps for the few Samsungs which were also a camera with some phone parts slapped on). The sensor is HUGE compared to the one of for example the iPhone.
I doubt that the device itself will be very good (especially the phone part), never heard of Altek, but as a camera it should perform quite decent, probably like most noname cameras. It makes much more sense than for example the LG Renoir.
Not to mention no camera-phone, outside of Korea and Japan, has a proper optical zoom.
Nokia N93 3xoptical zoom. Introduced april 2006
True, and I think there was a Sharp or something that was somehow available at least in Singapore that also had a 2x zoom. But these phones are very, very rare.
Anyway I do think that $400 is really stretching it a bit, the phone part won't be good, and the camera part won't be brilliant as well. I'd rather buy some tiny Sony, Casio, Olympus, etc. instead and an ordinary phone.
And also don't forget the G810 from Samsung with its 3x optical zoom.
why did I start this discussion ?? why ?? I admit don't know anything technical about cameras, all I am saying is I take a huge amount of photos every day (that means really a lot) with a simple casio compact camera, and I don't need to know what's the lense inside or anything, i just trusted the vendor when i bought it and i love, i adore, the pictures it takes. they look great when i watch them on a 127 cm LCD television, when i develop them, etc... every camera-phone (or phone with a camera in it, or whatever you call it) i have tried have the worst quality when it comes to take pictures. i was hoping this 12MP camera had an interpolation algo inside capable of making the pictures better even if the lense is not the best, at least it will be better than any camera-phone on the market.
Lol, welcome to the Internet n00b
Ralph, if you don't know anything technical about cameras, you shouldn't start out of the gate with "well maybe you don't see the point, but many of us people need a high res cam"!
And if you want good pictures, then you should know "what's the lense inside or anything..." and that it's spelled "lens."
I take several hundred photos a week, and I scan through for the best photos, crop them, adjust the color a bit, and send them off for public consumption. I get paid to do this. I'm not the only person here who does.
Now, I am not saying you have to become an expert. You don't. I'm sure you're more skilled in some other areas than I am, and photography skills are not the basis for your worth as a person. But don't come in here shouting about needing 12 megapixels and then follow up with an admission that you don't know a damn thing about digital photography, or how to spell "lens," or that digital images don't get developed, or throw in "interpolation algo" in a situation where there is more data (interpolation would be used to make a 12MP photo out of a 3MP photo).
I invite you to invest in a beginner's DSLR, buy a book about photography, and listen to other people, rather than shouting about how this product that nobody has ever seen is exactly what you and the other pros need.
And pardon the typo, I misread your name as Ralph instead of Raphael.
I think with developing he means ordering prints. Getting a DSLR might be a bit over the top though if he is happy with his small point and shoot Casio.
too much camera...needs more phone!
Sure the KIRF-iness is amusing, but a few years ago I reviewed a Thai phone-camera (more camera than phone), the i-mobile 902, which blew away most cameras on phones at the time with 5 megapixels, a large TTL sensor (very low noise), decent auto focus/macro optics, and a xenon flash:
http://tnkgrl.wordpress.com/2007/02/08/i-mobile-902-first-impressions/
There was no optical zoom, and the phone was otherwise similar in features to the Sony Ericsson W800i (ie. tri-band GPRS only). Nonetheless it OK overall, and awesome as a camera.
So perhaps this is similar... Maybe I'll get my hands on one!
To hell with all these phones with high megapixel. They don't do anything for picture quality really. I like to see a phone that brags about it's sensors size.