if connected

iPhone photo of a church

Nokia N82 photo of the same church

Manufacturers quote megapixels when selling phones and cameras. Yet colour quality, sharpness, lens, sensor and software are more important if you want good photos from a cameraphone. Here I compare two shots, one from the 5 megapixel N82 and the other from the 2 megapixel iPhone. I’ve resized them so that the number of megapixels shown here is the same.

At this identical size the iPhone image looks poor compared with the Nokia, especially its colour. At the full five megapixels, the N82 picture is stunning for a phone. Both photos above were taken at the same time at the same place. The framing is a little different as I found I had to stand a lot further away from the church to capture the whole spire in shot with the iPhone.

The camera is the iPhone’s Achilles heel. It’s not the number of megapixels that’s the problem. It’s the lens and sensor which lead to poor colour reproduction, some image distortion, and a lot of softness.

The new iPod is not about photos, despite Apple’s press releases, at least not yet. Why? Well, if the photo functions were core, then the iPod would be able to display digital camera photos offloaded onto the iPod from a digital camera by, say, Belkin’s media adaptor. Instead, viewable photos must be loaded via a sync with a PC or a Mac.
So, what’s the point? Well, like earlier iPods it’s something of a music masterstroke.
The new iPod’s larger colour screen makes music navigation easier, and barely adds to the size or weight of the device. Cover artwork is sync’ed down making the iPod experience closer to browsing a stack of CDs. Tied to that, Apple have increased the quoted battery life to 15 hours (from the 10 of the recently launched fourth generation iPod, or 8 for the third generation). This is all in a package that is smaller and lighter than my original two and a half year old model!
Apple has not been distracted. It’s focused on improving the music experience, again, and this is completely in line with our latest research.
The competition is closing on Apple, but the iPod is still the one to beat. Apple has led many times before — remember the Apple II or Airport — and lost it. Apple has to keep the enhancements coming or it will be caught.
Couldn’t agree more with this: Michael Gartenberg: Why there’s no video iPod – THE REAL REASON. In fact there is more detail on this topic in Portable Media Players in Europe.

Adding cameras to mobile phone handsets is a natural next step, as visual communication becomes part of the mix alongside voice and text messaging, and provides operators with new revenue lines to market. The mistake of some is to advertize these first generation camera phones as a substitute for existing cameras. As we argued in Avi’s recent report, the cameras need to improve to meet customer expectations, especially for lower light indoor use. The cameras will become more capable, in some markets this is already happening — Sony has recently launched a 2 megapixel camera phone in Japan — but positioning the early European and North American models without over promising will save customer ire, and provide neat upsell opportunities when the new handsets do arrive.