Do you care about iPhone's 2MP camera?

People with camera phones fall squarely into two camps: those that care about the camera (and actually use it) and those that don't. Count me in the camp that doesn't really care that much about the camera in my phone because I usually have a better (real) camera with me.

There are times however, when I don't have a real camera with me and reluctantly take photos with the 1.3MP camera in my Treo 700p. The problem is that pictures almost always come out fuzzy and lame. So this may be a case of not having the right camera phone to convert me.

I've heard from more than a few of you that the 2MP camera included in the iPhone is a deal breaker for you because you don't want to carry a phone and a camera. One thing you should keep in mind that Apple is positioning iPhone as a "smart" phone not a "camera" phone, so it's obvious that the camera is an afterthought.

One friend who complained about the lame 2MP camera in the iPhone is skipping it for a Sony Ericsson k800i which has a respectable 3.2MP camera.

Al-Manazir posted a piece about the iPhone camera's components:

Late last year Digitimes published an article stating that Taiwanese component makers would be supplying key components to the Apple iPhone. According the article the following are the camera component makers involved:

• Largan Precision will provide the Camera Lens
• Micron will supply the CMOS Imager
• Altus Technologies will provide the Camera Module Assembly

...

So to summarize what I think the specs of the iPhone will be they are as follows:

• Micron 1/4" CMOS Imager with a pixel size of 2.2µm x 2.2µm
• Largan 4 element Plastic Lens

I think we can expect that the iPhone will provide a decent camera that will compare to Nokia and Sony Ericssons current 2MP camera phones in image quality.

In addition to the generally poor quality of images captured by 2MP camera phones, iPhone also lacks a flash. This pretty much relegates it to quick snapshots in good lighting only.

Also, it's a shame that Apple didn't include a camera on the front of the iPhone for videoconferencing. Imagine iChat style video conferencing on your phone. Sure, Cingluar's non-3G EDGE network may not support decent quality video conferencing, but surely WiFi will.

And what about secure facilities that don't allow camera phones on site? (which include most of Apple's labs, ironically). Surely Apple thought of this. I'm pretty sure that the logic was that iPhone isn't directly targeting the enterprise market (as evidenced by the lack of Microsoft Exchange Server support) so they're not worried about the security implications of a built-in camera.

Granted, the iPhone is at least six months away and these opinions are being expressed without a hands-on review. But the camera on the iPhone looks somewhat disappointing. 

I'm interested in your take, do you even care about the iPhone's camera?

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