In time for the Olympics - 20mp camera phones

By Nick Mansell on Fri 07 November 2008

Ah, the future. So easy to ponder, so difficult to accurately predict. Still, Ericsson (that's the chaps over in Sweden as opposed to the Sony Ericsson folk based in Hammersmith) has had a crack, revealing this vision of 2012 at a press conference this week.

It sees us walking around with 12 to 20 megapixel camera phones, capable of shooting HD video comparable to today's top-end camcorders, browsing the web and downloading content at 100Mbps+ - all powered by a 1GHz processor.

An impossible dream? Probably not. With the way CMOS and CCD chops are developing, 20mp in a mobile seems well within reach. Cheap no-name camcorders are already managing to hit HD resolutions (although with dubious optical quality) and Intel's Atom is already being touted as a smartphone chip. As for 100Mbps downloads, Sweden is well on its way to 3G HSDPA's successor, '4G' LTE (Long Term Evolution), which promises such speeds.

The question, though, is do we really want or need these features? 20mp is useless without decent optics and HD video can look worse than standard def if it's full of noise and the frame rate can't keep up.

Faster download speeds and processors will always be welcome but there's a danger of mobiles simply going the way of Microsoft and Sony with the Xbox 360 and PS3. Both were shining examples of cutting edge technologies - but when it came down to it, what people really wanted was the far less capable but infinitely more innovative Wii. Perhaps Nintendo should make mobiles...

[Tech On - via Engadget]