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| Bye Bye Omnivision - Hello Sony? |
In what may be the strongest evidence for a new camera on the iPhone 5 yet, it now appears imminent that Apple will drop Omnivision as a camera supplier and instead opt for Sony to provide the camera on the new iPhone 5.
Forbes cited a stock analyst who, trying to explain Omnivision's lower stock price, made the suggestion that OmniVision “may have missed Apple’s commercial production deadline,” thus losing its lead supplier status for the iPhone 5 camera's image sensor to Sony. The analyst still expects the new iPhone to have an 8 MP camera, an improvement of the 5 MP camera of the iPhone 4.
But besides missing a production deadline, there might be other reasons for Apple to change the iPhone's camera supplier even though the 5 MP camera on the iPhone 4 hasn't had any problems yet.
Just focusing on the sensor in the iPhone 4, there are noticeable deficiencies:
- There is a noticeable green-halo effect when taking pictures under fluorescent or halogen light.
- The megapixel count is still fairly low in comparison to other cameras.
- The thickness of the sensor could be made thinner. (a thinner sensor = a thinner iPhone).
Remember that the camera is a part of the smartphone that is expected to get an upgrade every year. Another problem is that a camera on a smartphone is likely to have more noise because of its sensor. A typical way to combat this is to tinker with the camera's sensor, but Apple and other smartphone manufacturers are hampered by existing technology at this point.
- The higher the pixel count, the more noise the sensor produces in images.
- One way to combat noise in pictures is to increase the MP on the sensor as well as increasing its physical size in order to eliminate the heat and noise issues.
- But a thick sensor itself would prevent Apple from producing a skinny iPhone.
And while some may scoff at the whole megapixel count issue as a red herring for smartphone manufacturer's to sell their phones, there are legitimate reasons why consumers want more megapixels on their cameras:
Nowadays photos are not only used for prints. Many people want to view pictures on their computer, ipad, digital picture frame etc. In such cases there are differences in perceived detail especially when you want to zoom in to see certain details of a picture.
However you feel about the MP issue, it's still true that people want to enjoy quality photographs taken on their smart phones. Nobody with an expensive camera-equipped phone wants to carry around a secondary camera because their phone's camera isn't up to the task.
