Who Invented The Camera Phone – Your mobile phone, which has, by the way, replaced the digital camera. This is not very surprising since many smartphones have a built-in camera with a resolution of up
to 41 megapixels. But how did we get there?

  • The Nokia 7650, one of the first photophones in Switzerland | CC BY SA 2.5 Miguel Durán
  • The Nokia 7650, one of the first photophones in Switzerland | CC BY SA 2.5 Miguel Durán

The first cell phone with a built-in camera was released in 1999 in Japan. It took 3 years for this to happen in Switzerland.

They had a maximum resolution of 0.3 megapixels and you couldn’t shoot video.

The term photophone quickly established itself to designate all mobile phones with an
integrated camera.
A step back…. – The development of photo technology for mobile phones. Where did the idea to integrate a camera on cell phones come from? In fact, the idea dates back 10 years before the very first mobile phone landed in Switzerland.

Cell phones today have absolutely nothing to do with the first cell phones with which it was only possible to make calls.

The American company IBM wanted cell phones to function as “mini-computers”.

This was the birth of IBM Simon, today known to be the ancestor of smartphones. A great innovation at the time: we could send e-mails, faxes, manage calendars and contacts, and even play games. IBM Simon is the very first mobile phone with a touch screen.

Only one thing was missing: the camera.

The Japanese company Toshiba then released the first cell phone with a built-in camera. The Camesse cell phone is cult with its 0.1-megapixel resolution.

  • 15 years ago, it was unimaginable to take a picture of fireworks
  • 15 years ago, it was unimaginable to take a picture of fireworks.
  • Three steps forward
    At the time, the quality of photos taken with a cell phone was nowhere near equal to that of real digital cameras. For a long time, we had to live with poor quality
    photos.

The Sharp GX30 was released in 2004, this time featuring a resolution of one megapixel. In addition, it was possible to take 45-second videos.

It shouldn’t end there. The technological advance was extremely rapid. The phones have not only been improved but their camera has also been optimized. These days, the
resolution of smartphone cameras is generally 8 to 13 megapixels.

Finally, it is the Nokia Lumia 1020 which has the camera with the highest resolution ever integrated on a smartphone: 41 megapixels.

  1. The Nokia Lumia 1020’s camera has 41 megapixels | CC BY 2.0 Kārlis Dambrān
  2. The Nokia Lumia 1020’s camera has 41 megapixels | CC BY 2.0 Kārlis Dambrāns

Video recording, which was not possible in 2002, is now automatically integrated into all cell phones with cameras. However, the quality of the videos differs a lot
depending on the phone.

Cell phones that are not considered smartphones do not have very good quality equipment. Smartphones, on the other hand, have very powerful graphics processors and can take videos in Full-HD quality even if this does not allow them to stay ahead of SLR cameras.

Smartphones are part of that category of object that almost everyone owns. They gradually replaced digital cameras to such an extent that in 2007 digital camera sales
fell.

At the same time, gadgets for smartphone cameras also appeared. We find, for example, interchangeable lenses worthy of professional equipment suitable for smartphones:
fisheye, wide-angle lens… However, smartphone cameras still do not compete with high-quality SLR cameras.

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