Until now, cameras on phones have been treated as secondary citizens (at best) in the camera world. They generally come with sensors roughly about 1/2.5" or smaller and LED flash which is only effective if your subject is about 3 inches away from the phone.
Here is a list of sensor sizes on camera phones:
- Sony Ericsson Satio 12MP – 1/2.5″
- Samsung Pixon12 12 MP– 1/2.5″
- Nokia N86 8MP – 1/2.5″
- Sony Ericsson Vivaz 8MP – 1/3.2″
source: GSM Arena
Here comes the Nokia N8, an advanced shooter with phone functionality running on the Symbian OS. Here are some of the impressive camera specs on the phone:
- 1/1.83" Sensor. This is almost as big as advanced prosumer cameras such as the 1/1.7" Canon G11/S90, Ricoh GRIII/GXR-S10 and the 1/1.63" Panasonic LX3.
- Xenon Flash
- 28mm f2.8 Carl Zeiss Lens
- ISO 1200 (max)
- 10cm close up
- Improved Symbian OS for faster Autofocus, Noise Reduction and shot-to-shot speed
- ARM 11 680MHz Processor with HW 3D accelerator (this is probably more powerful than most camera processors)
- Dimension: 113.5 x 59.1 x 12.9 mm, 86 cc, 135g
From a phone perspective, the N8 comes with all the bells and whistles of a smart phone.
- Quad Band
- 3.5G HSDPA, 10.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 2.0 Mbps
- Wifi b/g/n
- 360x640 3.5" AMOLED Screen 16m colors (This means 230k pixel screen)
- 16GB Built in memory
- 3.5mm Jack
- 720p 25fps video with LED
- HDMI TV Output
- A-GPS support; Ovi Maps 3.0
