The Rain In Spain Falls Mainly On Camera Phones
This week’s 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Spain had a surprising number of announcements related to taking pictures. Never heard of the 3GSM World Congress? It’s a show dedicated to advancing cell phone technology.
In recent years it’s become the prime venue for technology debuts from camera phone companies and those supplying the industry. This year everyone seemed to be jumping on the 3MP camera phone wagon (For more info, go to 3GSM). But I’m more interested in the technology and features that are too new to be found in any current or soon-to-be-released model. At the top of that list is a new 5MP CMOS sensor from Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology. This company is one of the biggest players in CMOS-imaging sensors, especially for camera phones. It is also the manufacturer of the 3MP sensor found in the Nokia N80—the camera phone that raised the bar on image quality last year to a new high and captured images that even by Pop standards could be turned into photoquality 8x10 inch prints.
Micron announced a 5MP sensor in a 1/3.2 inch format that features tiny 1.75-micron pixels and the amazing ability to capture up to 60 frames per second in 720p video resolution, or 30 fps at 1080p resolution! Now, I don’t expect to see this chip in ultra-thin Razors or the smallest camera phones next year because those phones traditionally use a slightly smaller ¼-inch sensor (for more information on camera phone sensor formats, see Micron Technology). But the fact that a larger slider-type camera phone such as the previously-mentioned N80 or most bulkier smart phone designs could soon feature true HDTV recording capability is pretty exciting. Around the same time that happens (expect by next year’s CES show in January, 2008), I wouldn’t be surprise if some of the traditional camera companies installed the same chip in their ultra-compact models or HD camcorders.
On the lens front for camera phones, both DXO Labs (with partner MagnaChip) and Omnivision Technologyies announced what appears to be similar products designed to improve image quality in camera phones. In both announcements, these companies described a focusing method that doesn’t use any moving parts and delivers images with expanded depth of field. (Omnivision calls its tech Wavefront Coding Technology, DXO calls its "Digital Optics Digital Auto-Focus (DAF) Extended Depth-of-Field (EDoF) Priority" Both include a special fixed focal length lens that projects an out-of-focus image onto the sensor. Detail and sharpness are then extracted using proprietary image processing algorithms, and other algorithms reduce distortion and chromatic aberrations as well. These companies are making bold claims about how their systems work, but only time will tell if “digital” focusing will outperform real optical AF, or whether this new technology will just be limited to camera phones that don’t have the room, battery power, or budget for a sharp autofocusing lens.
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