Cell Phones

Phone Cameras

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Deal Addict
Dec 27, 2013
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Woodbridge

Phone Cameras

So the new HTC One came out and people are flipping out that the camera is only 4MP. Can you give me one example of a scenario in which someone taking a picture with their phone requires more than 4mp? Megapixels are all marketing. It's getting out of hand and actually makes the camera worse in my opinion if the sensor size is so small since each individual pixel barely picks up any light. I'd be much more disappointed that they removed optical image stabilization. That's actually practical when you want to take pictures of text. But nobody is even mentioning that. The power of marketing I guess.
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Deal Addict
Dec 27, 2013
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I mean. I'm willing to bet that 99.9% of photos taken by a cell phone world wide are NOT intended to be used to produce high quality, large size prints. What HTC does give with lower pixels on the same sensor size is far better low light quality. People take pictures in low light far more often than they take pictures for the purpose of producing a large, high quality print.

If this HTC M8 camera had included optical image stabilization I would go so far as to say that it would have been the best camera available on any cell phone, GIVEN the way that most people use their cell phone cameras.
Jr. Member
Jun 15, 2013
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VANCOUVER
jvnanu wrote: Can you give me one example of a scenario in which someone taking a picture with their phone requires more than 4mp?
If you want to crop the picture to zoom in, the resolution of the picture is important. In the absence of optical zoom in cell phone cameras, resolution is needed for 'digital' zoom.
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Sep 23, 2009
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It's 4MP because HTC M7/M8 uses ultra pixels.

But other than that, have no idea what you're complaining about, let alone knowing what your self is saying...and this is coming from a photographer's perspective.
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Dec 27, 2013
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EnyCe - I'm complaining about the fact that people are complaining about the HTC camera having "only" 4MP.

Ultra pixels is a name. It doesn't mean anything. It's a brand. They came up with it because they realize that people care too much about MP and if they just sell it as 4MP nobody will care. But since they're ULTRA pixels, now they care. Ultra pixel just means the pixel is bigger... which is obvious, and not something proprietary. The sensor is the same, but there are fewer pixels... obviously the pixels are larger. What I'm saying is that marketing has taken us to the point where people will not buy a phone because the camera has "only" 4 MP. My problem is that the overwhelming majority of those people will never take a picture on their phones in which they actually need more than 4 MP. It's all marketing.
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eresco wrote: If you want to crop the picture to zoom in, the resolution of the picture is important. In the absence of optical zoom in cell phone cameras, resolution is needed for 'digital' zoom.
Yeah, that's the one thing that I thought of too. But then I thought two things: 1) how many people actually do this? and 2) what are they cropping for? If you're cropping a big picture to fit as your tiny Facebook profile, you don't need some great resolution to do that.
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Dec 27, 2013
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And I guess to summarize in a nutshell why I have a problem with this:

Manufacturers mostly create products that people want. Every now and then you'll have a manufacturer introduce something new to the market, but often times most of the "innovation" that goes on is to make the things that people want even better. In this case, sales figures have shown that people want megapixels. People don't know WHY they want megapixels. People don't know what they megapixels are for. They just have this belief that more is better. As long as that belief is there, companies will keep trying to "improve" by adding more and more megapixels, rather than focusing on things that might actually improve picture quality or user experience.
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Sep 23, 2009
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jvnanu wrote: EnyCe - I'm complaining about the fact that people are complaining about the HTC camera having "only" 4MP.

Ultra pixels is a name. It doesn't mean anything. It's a brand. They came up with it because they realize that people care too much about MP and if they just sell it as 4MP nobody will care. But since they're ULTRA pixels, now they care. Ultra pixel just means the pixel is bigger... which is obvious, and not something proprietary. The sensor is the same, but there are fewer pixels... obviously the pixels are larger. What I'm saying is that marketing has taken us to the point where people will not buy a phone because the camera has "only" 4 MP. My problem is that the overwhelming majority of those people will never take a picture on their phones in which they actually need more than 4 MP. It's all marketing.
And where are you basing these facts from? Anyone will buy a phone based on the brand. The Nokia Lumia 1020 is 41MP, and the Sony Xperia Z1 is 20mp but are the sales of these phones sky rocketing based on your claims? Are they exceeding phones with lower mega pixels? Heck no. People still buy iPhones at 8MP, Samsung Galaxy's with their 13-15mp range and the HTC One is no different.
Deal Addict
Dec 27, 2013
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EnyCe - I'm basing my facts on comments on YouTube reviews of the HTC M8 and on comments in online reviews. The overwhelming majority of complaints are specifically about the camera not having more than 4 MP.

Nokia and Sony phones fall behind in sales for other reasons, you're right. However, look at their marketing. They're selling their cameras. Look at any review of those phones on YouTube. They focus on the camera (no pun intended). So there ARE people who purchase those phones specifically because of the camera.

Samsung spends infinitely more on marketing than Nokia or Sony or HTC. Apple products have almost a cult following. But I'll ask you this: if Apple were to announce their iPhone 6 as having only a 4MP shooter, or if the Samsung Galaxy S5 had come out with only 4MP, 1) what would be the biggest criticism of the two phones, and 2) would their sales numbers drop?

All else being equal, people would rather buy a phone with a camera that has more megapixels.

And of course this is all speculation, but I'm sure this data exists somewhere I just don't have the time to find it now. However, if you were to survey consumers shopping for a new phone, I'm certain you'll find that a significant number of them would be willing to pay more for a phone if the only difference were more megapixels, AND, I'm certain that a significant number of them would be willing to trade off some functionality of the phone (e.g. they might give up NFC, wireless charging, accept a smaller battery, etc.) in exchange for more megapixels.
Deal Fanatic
Jan 18, 2004
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My wife has the HTC One.
If it was 4MP and took awesome photos.. I'm good with it.
But it doesn't take good photos.
Even when not blown up, the colours are washed out, there lots of noise, and outdoors pics are quite bad.
Even the indoor low light photos are not amazing.

Sad but my GS4 takes better pics 90%.. just hate it's slow shutter speed.
Deal Fanatic
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jvnanu wrote: Yeah, that's the one thing that I thought of too. But then I thought two things: 1) how many people actually do this? and 2) what are they cropping for? If you're cropping a big picture to fit as your tiny Facebook profile, you don't need some great resolution to do that.
I crop often.
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canadiankorean wrote: My wife has the HTC One.
If it was 4MP and took awesome photos.. I'm good with it.
But it doesn't take good photos.
Even when not blown up, the colours are washed out, there lots of noise, and outdoors pics are quite bad.
Even the indoor low light photos are not amazing.

Sad but my GS4 takes better pics 90%.. just hate it's slow shutter speed.
Yes! This is exactly my point. The image quality is bad. That has nothing to do with the print size of the pictures. People want good quality images, not large images. Yet almost all of the marketing I see is about size. Even on digital cameras... go to a Best Buy and look at their cameras. Look at the sticker that displays the megapixels. Now look at the sticker that displays the glass, or the optical zoom, or other features. The megapixels sticker is placed in a more prominent location, using bolder, larger font. These are all intentional and calculated decisions used by marketing experts because they know that people care about MP. And then when they get a bad picture, many people will assume that more MP will solve the problem. But it won't. HTC could stick 20 MP without changing the sensor or class or software and you'll still have the same noisy, washed out pictures, you'll just be able to print them to a billboard.
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canadiankorean wrote: jvnanu, do you own the HTC One?
No. I went from a iPhone 4s to a Nexus 5 now. I'm not talking specifically about the picture quality on any specific phone. I'm more commenting on the general idea that most consumers have that megapixels are the, if not one of the most important factors of a good quality camera.
Deal Addict
Dec 27, 2013
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canadiankorean wrote: I crop often.
That's fine. So your specific needs are different than others. You might want a phone with a camera that meets those needs. There will obviously be people who do in fact need a cell phone with a higher resolution camera. But most people don't. When you crop pictures taken with the 2013 HTC One, do they meet your needs in terms of resolution? Forget about image quality and colour etc. Is the size enough for your cropping needs?
Deal Fanatic
Jan 18, 2004
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I'm guessing it's easier to put a 20MP sticker on the box than 20 sample photos that shows how awesome a 4MP camera is.
Also as a note, the 13MP gs4 makes a very sharp image when downsized to 4MP. A benefit of the larger MP?
Deal Fanatic
Jan 18, 2004
6433 posts
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jvnanu wrote: That's fine. So your specific needs are different than others. You might want a phone with a camera that meets those needs. There will obviously be people who do in fact need a cell phone with a higher resolution camera. But most people don't. When you crop pictures taken with the 2013 HTC One, do they meet your needs in terms of resolution? Forget about image quality and colour etc. Is the size enough for your cropping needs?
No the cropping on the htc one pics make it hard to print.
The image quality suffers a lot.
Deal Addict
Dec 27, 2013
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canadiankorean wrote: I'm guessing it's easier to put a 20MP sticker on the box than 20 sample photos that shows how awesome a 4MP camera is.
Also as a note, the 13MP gs4 makes a very sharp image when downsized to 4MP. A benefit of the larger MP?
Maybe. I'm not sure. What happens when you use a 13MP camera to take an image that has a resolution of only 4MP? Does it group pixels together as one larger pixel? Does it use only a certain number of pixels in the middle making the sensor size essentially smaller? Does it take the picture in 13MP and then compress it down to 4 after the fact? Not sure how that works if it's a software thing or a hardware thing.
Deal Addict
Dec 27, 2013
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canadiankorean wrote: No the cropping on the htc one pics make it hard to print.
The image quality suffers a lot.
Yeah, that's not surprising. As I said, a lot of people do need a higher resolution camera, but I'm interested in seeing how many?

I'm looking at this from a marketing perspective now. There are two possibilities here. More megapixels ACTUALLY make the camera significantly better, which is why the market demands it, which is why it's included in my product and why I'm focusing on that spec. Or, and this is what I think is going on, megapixels is something that the market demanded first, manufacturers put in in there to meet market demand, and now I'm highlighting it in my marketing material. It's the chicken and the egg. Do we have MP because they make the camera better or do we have MP because people THINK it makes the camera better and they'll pay for it?
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Case and point... galaxy-s5-htc-one-m8-one-should-i-get-1464282/

This individual admitted that he does not do must editing of pictures after the fact. He is comparing two different phones. When comparing cameras between the two phones he is specifically stating that one is better than the other BECAUSE it has more MP. This kind of thinking is very common.

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