the front facing camera should have almost as good quality as the rear. a lot of people take more photos facing their way anyways. just my opinion.
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Sony Likely to Provide Front-Facing Camera Sensors for Future iPhone
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For whatever reason, I had always assumed that the iPhone camera included a CCD sensor. I have always been particular to the CMOS, so imagine my surprise reading this article. 
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Yes, but do selfies really need to be high quality?
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Yes, but do selfies really need to be high quality?
You only need ~1 MP for 720p video.
You need roughly ~2 MP for 1080P video.
More than 2 MP is currently an overkill for video.
Excellent plan - pay lots of money for a company in financial trouble. What could possibly go wrong.
For whatever reason, I had always assumed that the iPhone camera included a CCD sensor. I have always been particular to the CMOS, so imagine my surprise reading this article.
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Yes, but do selfies really need to be high quality?
no but for face timing it would be nice to have a camera that performed as well the the rear facing one. sometimes it is so dark you can't even see the other person.
But what I feel like I should point out, which a lot of people don't know, is that your FaceTime calls aren't being displayed in HD anymore, thanks to the fact that Apple lost against a patent troll for the connection used to make HD FaceTime calls. The resolution nowadays is 480 by 360 in Wifi and hopefully 3G/4G.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1634935/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1634935/
Depends on what kind of "pixels" you are talking about.
http://www.13thmonkey.org/~boris/photos/Foveon/foveon-vs-bayer.html
(edit: another reference added)
http://www.ddisoftware.com/sd14-5d/
Thanks for reminding me/pointing that out. I read about it at the time, but, I forgot about it functionally.
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Well, actually, past iPhones have used their state-of-the-art sensors, starting with the iPhone 4, in their back cameras. That is, unless we see a dramatic increase in sensor size (making the sensor pixels much larger), there won't be any breakthrough.
(Again, I'm speaking of the back camera. No sensible person would use the front one for shooting on any phone with a much better back one. Except for selfies, of course. But that isn't serious shooting.)
Yes, they (the Windows Phone camera flagships - but not the previous 808!) used to oversaturate colors. Fortunately, the latest Nokia Camera Pro (or Pro Camera?) allows for fine-tuning saturation, making it possible to dial it down.
Nevertheless, it's not oversaturating that makes people think Nokia has great camera tech but, among other things,
- audio (Rich recording). Heck, the iPhones, not even the 5s, aren't capable of even stereo recording, let alone other goodies like high-dynamic recording (808, 1020 etc.)
- OIS - it is so much better than Apple's, particularly in stills mode, pretty bad image stabilizer.
- Xenon flash in some models
- full-manual control (if needed) in all their WP flagships. The 808 also offers some manual settings. Even the 808 has far better support for manual settings compared to the iPhone.
- RAW support
- effective resolution and noise reduction. The lens of particularly the 808 is capable of resolving true 30-35 Mpixels.
Sigma won't license their Foveon sensors to other companies. That is, Sony stays with Bayer sensors.
Nevertheless, the OP was right: 2 Mpixels, arranged in 16:9, is indeed the best setup for 1080p video, making it possible to sample the sensor with the best efficiency and possible image quality. (No need to crop / line skip / oversample, they resulting in narrower FoV / moire and aliasing / excess CPU and, therefore, battery usage, in this order.)
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Let me disagree. Not even the Xperia Z1 flaghsip can come close the Nokia 808, image quality-wise. And I'd say the iPhone 5s and the Z1 is about the same, IQ-wise, assuming you use the downsampled "Creative" mode of the Z1 and not the cr@ppy 20 Mpixel one.
Unfortunately, while the Z1 has indeed a good lens, it has just too small a sensor with miniscule pixels. This is why it has very bad image quality (full of noise / NR artifacts even at base ISO) at full resolution - it's just not worth using it in full-res mode.
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For whatever reason, I had always assumed that the iPhone camera included a CCD sensor. I have always been particular to the CMOS, so imagine my surprise reading this article.
The two technologies have different strengths and weaknesses. However, it can't be stated one is much better than the other.
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Yes, ATM Sony is the king of sensor tech. (Not counting in side players like Sigma / Foveon.) This is why most contemporary cameras use their sensors. (Except for Canon, who stick with their, particularly DR-wise, somewhat inferior tech not to support their direct competitor.)
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You mean video bitrate? All iPhones have necessarily high bitrates and high-quality H.264 encoders. Starting with the iPhone 4, I've published tons of tests, comparing their encoder to that of, say, Panasonic's / Nikon's self-standing, dedicated cameras and have always found iPhones better.
Nevertheless, if you really want to increase the video bitrate,
- you can use a lot of third-party AppStore apps or
- jailbreak and use for example my camera tweaker app, compatible with every single iPhone starting with the 3GS, at https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18640187/
Better not. The Z1's image quality isn't very good - they've crammed just too many pixels on that smallish 1/2.3" sensor. This is why all the iPhones, starting with the 4S, have considerably better pixel-level image quality than the Z1 used in 20 Mpixel mode. (Now, the default oversampled 8 Mpixel mode of the Z1 is considerably better than the 20 Mpixel one.)
Having 20 Mpixels has another problem (unless you're Nokia and can use custom components with over 1 Gbit/s sensor readout speeds like those in the 808): readout speed. The iPhone 5s has a VERY fast sensor. MUCH faster than that of the Z1. This is why the 5s is capable of around 10 fps burst shooting. This simply wouldn't be possible with a 20 Mpixel sensor. No wonder the Z1 can't do so fast burst shooting either.
Sony is #2
Sony is actually #2 when it comes to Point & Shoot & SLT camera sales. Yes, even above Nikon. They make great imaging sensors and have pioneered their development... and apple needs great sensors.
I wonder if the front facing camera will ever get much better. If so, then eventually there will be those who will demand vibration reduction and better lens etc. It's great for video chat... 1.2MP is still 1280 x 960 resolution... which is high-def for video chat... although, not as great for selfies. If they could find a way to use one imaging sensor for both directions that'd be neat-o
Sony is actually #2 when it comes to Point & Shoot & SLT camera sales. Yes, even above Nikon. They make great imaging sensors and have pioneered their development... and apple needs great sensors.
I wonder if the front facing camera will ever get much better. If so, then eventually there will be those who will demand vibration reduction and better lens etc. It's great for video chat... 1.2MP is still 1280 x 960 resolution... which is high-def for video chat... although, not as great for selfies. If they could find a way to use one imaging sensor for both directions that'd be neat-o
Sony is actually #2 when it comes to Point & Shoot & SLT camera sales. Yes, even above Nikon. They make great imaging sensors and have pioneered their development... and apple needs great sensors.
Well, it isn't hard to beat Nikon in the P&S and the SLT area ;-) They, being mostly a DSLR company, have never put much emphasis on those areas, unlike the O&S king Canon or even the ILC king Panasonic / Olympus. This is why their P&S cameras are only worth purchasing for budget-sensitive folks and the Nikon 1 series (the only Nikon ILC) turned out to be financially a major disaster (bad sales).
Shutter speed control is not an option since shutter speed is the only way to control the exposure so it needs to be automatic. There is no aperture on the lens. Everything is shot wide-open. Exposure lock would be nice.
Personally I think the resolution is adequate for what it does. What I would like to see is better dynamic range and low light capabilities.
It also depends on the aspect ratio.
Uh...source? Their CMOS sensors aren't exactly world-class performance.
They make a mediocre line up of digicams. The Alpha DSLRs are only catching up to par with Nikon and Canon offerings.
That's not true. Nokia focuses on both low light capability and high megapixels. But arguably low-light performance is more important to them because they put a considerable amount of effort into making the OIS stabilisation mechanism for their phones for the sole purpose of allowing longer exposures with less blur (which is ideal for low light photos). Not to mention that a large part of their advertising highlights the low light capabilities of the Lumia line.
(the bolding in the quote was added by me for emphasis)
EDIT: I didn't see this posted on the first page before I typed my response.
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1. Wrong. Another variable is the ISO.
2. manual shutter control wold be a GODSEND, particularly because the iPhone has a tendency to go down to 1/15s shutter speed to keep the ISO as low as possible. Yes, even if you shoot action - there doesn't seem to be an "intelligent scene mode" algorithm in the iPhone quickly noticing you're shooting action and, to avoid motion blur, increasing the ISO to make the shutter speed much higher (over 1/100s).
1, iOS7 supports combined exposure & focus lock in the stock Camera client and
2, iOS has always supported separate locks (along with WB lock) in third-party apps via the API.
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Well, it was about up until 11-12 years ago that CMOS was considered to be worse than CCD. Today, the difference is gone and, for that matter, CMOS has considerably faster sensor readout, allowing for fast video. No wonder a LOT of even high-end cameras use CMOS.
EDIT: my second response was about CCD vs. CMOS in general, not those of Sony particularly.
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Yeah, Sony is probably the king, but somehow I think they are in some kind of MP race against themselves. (Z1, D800). Personally I'd take a D800 body with D610 sensor over the 36MP D800 any day.
I also like what Fuji is doing with their X-Trans Sensor (and cameras in general - their design is gorgeous and their cameras work beautifully). I'd love to have fuji colors on a smartphone (or any other camera)
Me too. It's pretty pathetic all(!!!) other smartphone platforms have supported a lot more manual modes for 3-4 years. (Except for manual shutter speed, which is only supported by Nokia's Camera Pro on Windows Phone 8.) iOS doesn't support almost anything manual even via the API (let alone the "KISS" stock Camera app.)
Heck, iOS doesn't even support proper exposure compensation...
You vaguely make the case that all of those features are beneficial, yet, these are just design decisions that require protruding camera modules, slow shot to shot times, post processing, and so far poor user experiences. Hence, these cameras are playing to a niche that values IQ without compromise. Fair enough.
Apple and Samsung are building in excess of 100M smartphones each of a single model, and both are in the top of the pack for IQ and usability. Sony is encouraged by its huge numbers of camera module sales to to invest heavily in R&D that Nokia will not be able to sustain.
I'm surprised that Nokia, nee, MS hasn't plans to shift to a more mainstream camera module approach for their flagship smartphones. Seems like an obvious dead end to be pursuing for some small number of sales.