The Lensas F2218: why wait for your 8 megapixel cameraphone?

Yeah, yeah, we know that Nokia, Samsung, and probably every other top tier manufacturer has an 8 megapixel cameraphone cookin' in the oven as we speak. Problem is, you're impatient, we're impatient, and frankly, we'd like this stuff now. Chinese firm Lensas has the solution to the pollution, though: meet the F2218, quite possibly the orangest 8 megapixel candybar on the market today. There's even a xenon flash in there, too, and from the looks of the sample shots on PConline's review, the whole package does alright for itself. Of course, without some incredibly fast network (say, TD-SCDMA) to back it up it gets a little tricky to effectively get those massive shots back and forth, but it's a start -- and in a reversal of roles, it's the big guys who'll be doing the copying come next year.

[Via Unwired View]

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 6th 2007 3:41AM]

I really like that color actually...

Any chance this baby is GSM? If it's quadband I just might consider grabbing one...

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 6th 2007 5:10AM]

No auto-focus... Pass!

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 6th 2007 6:36AM]

Now if only it shared the same CMOS sensor as the DSLR it's sitting next to...

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 6th 2007 12:07PM]

MinceyFresh,
How much would you be prepared to pay for a camera phone with a CMOS sensor from a dSLR and with the optics to support it? And keep in mind that CMOS is only good when the sensor is very large. When you go down to the sizes used in P&S cameras and camera phones then picture quality suffers tremendously and high quality noise reduction software is required to cope with the large amount of noise.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 6th 2007 2:51PM]

Haha, I know, I was just being a smartass... :D
Yeah, I know that the CMOS is only good when it's large (which is why I quipped that it should share the *same* CMOS as the DSLR next to it)...

I'm pretty sure that if someone did decide to try putting something such as an APS-C sensor into a mobile phone, they'd probably have to radically redesign the shape of the phone and position of the camera beyond any sort of practicality.

I've seen crazier things, though, so who knows...

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 6th 2007 4:43PM]

8 mega pixels but no auto focus. What a crap!

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 7th 2007 4:02AM]

Yes, the radical redesign would be necessary, hence my comment about "the optics to support" the sensor.

Regarding the comments about lack of auto focus, I'm not so sure this is a bad thing. A camera with fixed focus is always ready to shoot immediately while auto focus always takes some time, plus that auto focus requires good lightning. Some auto focus cameras lack focus assist LEDs so these are very difficult to operate in low light situations. One example is my i-mobile 902. It has auto focus, Sony 5 MP CCD ICX495 sensor (also used in Canon's 5 MP P&S cameras), but no focus assist LED! It shoots extremely good night photos but only of typical landscape shots where infinity focus is OK.