When will we see a decent camera?

I remember the good old days when a 1.3 megapixel camera in a cellphone was a WOW factor How quickly consumer demands change

On a more serious note, it is VERY difficult to engineer a cell phone camera that takes pictures of the same quality as even a cheap point-and-shoot of yesteryear. It has everything to do with sensor size. You can have all the processing power you want, but if you have a tiny sensor, you will have a huge amount of noise compared to a full-sized camera. This is a prominent problem even with high-end DSLR's (look up Canon 50D image noise tests compared to 5D). The smaller the sensor, the more megapixels it has crammed in it, the more noise you get. Frankly, it is remarkable that CCD manufacturers can fit 5 megapixels into such a small sensor area. The blurryness that you see is mostly due to the camera software applying noise reduction algorithms to make the image at least presentable.

I agree, there is no point in all the megapixels i such a small sensor. Cellphones should never go over 3 Mp, ever. But it absolutely is not easy to make a good quality cell phone camera, which is why most of them produce pretty miserable shots.

 

X10, photos at the bottom

'nuff said

 

but can I attach a true camera into an Android phone and have the picture taken from the camera and transferred immediately to the phone over the USB port without transferring memory cards ?