Camera Phone

Samsung is looking to satisfy consumers who want more than a second string performance from their mobile phone camera with the announcement of a new full-touch screen, 8-megapixel unit dubbed the Pixon. The slimline (13.8mm) design does look more like a camera than a phone and incorporates a number of features usually found only in the stand-alone camera realm such as face detection, shake-reduction and geo-tagging. The unit's 3.2 inch, 240x400 touch screen also enhances its photo browsing capability and with auto-focus, dual power LED Flash, a music player, FM Radio, Bluetooth connectivity and video recording at 30 fps (720 x 480) including slow motion playback, it looks to be another useful example of convergence in the mobile handset market.  Read More

These days in-built cameras are very much a standard accessory for mobile phones, and it's an area where the bar just keeps on getting higher. In the latest news, Digital Imaging Systems has launched the first ever 9 megapixel camera module for mobile phones. Designed so that handset manufacturers can upgrade without hardware change, the DIS6931 is an all in one still camera module that includes auto-focus, high quality lenses, mechanical shutter and a neutral density filter.  Read More

May 7, 2008 Some six months after its introduction in Europe, Samsung has launched the G800 mobile phone in Australia. An addition to its high end Photography Camera Phone range, the 5-megapixel G800 brings features common in most digital cameras into a mobile phone including Optical Inner Zoom, Xenon Flash, Power LED, Image Stabiliser, Red Eye Reduction, Panorama Shot as well as Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) and Face Detection.  Read More

November 16, 2007 Marketers are always looking for new ways to reach customers and the ongoing boom in mobile phones has seen mobile marketing become an important part of the mix. Now SnapTell, a provider of image-recognition-based mobile marketing solutions, has announced the release of its "Snap.Send.Get" solution that converts every camera phone into an opt-in marketing device. Snap.Send.Get enables consumers to obtain information with the snap of a photo while marketers, in the process, get to create a personalized and targeted brand conversation with their customers. The SnapTell solution works with all camera phones, using existing collateral and product packaging, thereby doing away with the need for special barcodes or additional software.  Read More

February 9, 2007 Ultra Wideband (UWB) and Wireless USB chipset solutions provider, Wisair, has announced it will be demonstrating the use of Wireless USB in camera phones at the 3GSM World Congress next week. The demo, based on Certified Wireless USB, will use the Wisair 542 chip embedded into a Nokia Nseries camera phone to wirelessly send images and video to a laptop computer.  Read More

January 8, 2007 From time-to-time, we see a potentially disruptive technology of such magnitude we ponder its ability to shake the foundations - Scanbuy rates in that category. The irony of the ingenious system is that it leverages the humble barcode – a sixty year old far-from-vogue technology under threat from RFID. Last week, the U.S. Patent Office issued a patent to Scanbuy for a "System and method for decoding and analyzing barcodes using a mobile device". The software works on any handheld device (download here) with a camera and internet connection and uses the camera to read the barcode, then connects the device’s web browser to the corresponding web site. What this enables, which we think is very significant - is the connection of physical objects to the internet - a Physical World Hyperlink. Camera phones have only been available in most countriesfor four years yet they are fast approaching ubiquity– in 2005, 45 percent of all mobile phones sold in the U.S. were camera phones, with 64 percent in Western Europe and 90% plus in the logical Asian hotspots. Global sales of camera phones is expected to approach a billion a year by the end of this decade – accordingly, Scanbuy’s free software and a mobile phone means that a consumer can connect with a poster, billboard, magazine, newspaper, food packaging, businesscard, city guide, map or merchandising display – it’s a no-brainer to make a dead-as-a-doornail product interactive to the majority of people. 2D barcodes are already the preferred way for Japanese and Korean consumers to access mobile content but the beauty of the Scanbuy system is that it works on any camera phone and doesn’t require a special attachment or built-in bar code reader. The first application of this technology is fairly logical - being able to walk through any physical store and snap the barcode of any onbject and immediately have your phone tell you where else you can buy it and price comparison shop for you. We think that represents significant seismic activity under the foundations of bricks and mortar businesses, but it’s just one aspect of what can happen when you connect the real world to the internet. If you have an idea for how it can work for you, there’s even a software developers kit.  Read More

July 10, 2006 It’s taking some time in comparison to genuinely advanced countries such as Korea, but the level of picture quality of camera phones is finally approaching an acceptable level thanks to the Samsung SCH-a990 via Verizon Wireless. In addition to a 3.2 megapixel camera phone, the SCH-a990 boasts video recording capabilities, V CAST to view video and V CAST Music to download music directly to the phone and Bluetooth to allow a customer to print pictures wirelessly to a Bluetooth-enabled printer basic print profile. The SCH-a990 has a unique design that looks first like a phone and then, when the screen is rotated 180 degrees, like a camera. This design, along with the high resolution and features such as a flash and in-camera photo editing software, make the SCH-a990 the first mobile device that is as much a camera as it is a multimedia phone.  Read More

April 7, 2006 Samsung Electronics continues to push the boundaries of the convergent device at CEBIT earlier this year, first announcing an 8GB hard disk smart phone, and then trumping the camera phone market with the announcement of the SCH-B600 - a 10 mpx camera phone with 3X optical zoom and 5x digital zoom. The “firsts” for the camera also include auto-focus, a fill-light function and a 1/2,000th of a second shutter speed. We’ve previously reported on the company’s string of world-firsts such as the first 5 MPX phone, 7 MPX phone and 8 MPX phone but the trend is not slowing by any measure – the SCH-B600 will be on the Korean market by mid-year and also includes a 2-inch, 16-million-pixel color TFT LCD screen, supports satellite digital multimedia broadcasting services and comes with a dual-face, dual-speaker system, TV-out and MP3 player. Not surprisingly, everyone queued up at CTIA to see the phone.  Read More

January 30, 2006 We’ve talked about the highly competitive nature of Korean giant Samsung previously. If they ever introduce that well known game, “mine’s bigger than yours” at the Olympics, Samsung would be a Gold medal contender, capable of playing in almost any consumer electronics arena and winning the game. Last March at CEBIT, Samsung announced the world’s first 7 megapixel camera phone, the SCH-V770 and for the last few months has been showing the first eight megapixel camera phone, the V8200, to potential distribution partners at various trade shows, culminating in disclosure to select media at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month. The V8200 will be on shelves in Seoul within six weeks but will only be available in Korea. Both models (770 and 8200) will be available side-by-side as the specifications are slightly different - the 770 has a x3 optical zoom whereas the V8200 has just digital zoom. But the V8200 has just about every other feature you can think of – such as VGA (640x480) video recording, a TV-out function, Video on Demand, Music on Demand, an MP3 Player, a Microsoft Office file viewer, a 16M-color TFD Display, TransFlash external memory, dual speakers for excellent sound quality and a melody composer so you can develop your own ringtones … and digital images 3296 x 2472 pixels in size. Detailed images inside.  Read More