Features
Dean Quinn
11:42, 15 Jul 2013
The Nokia Lumia 1020 could change the way we think about mobile imaging tech, but how did camera phones get to where they are now?
It's 2001, Apple has just released the iPod, Harry Potter makes his big screen debut, terrorists fly two hijacked passenger jets into New York's most iconic buildings causing catastrophic loss of life, and Shaggy rides high in the charts with a cautionary tale of denial.
Chances are that if you were around at the time that you'd remember all of the above. Heck, you might even have some ephemera related to them (we know you've got a dusty copy of 'It wasn't me' in a drawer somewhere). It is however, quite unlikely that you'll have a photographic record of you attending a screening of the J K Rowling-created wizard's inaugural adventure or will have captured on film first hand the events of that fateful September morning in the Big Apple.
Had all those things occurred just few years later, not only would they have been snapped and/or filmed, but they'd have been shared with the world via various means. Why? Because of the birth and proliferation of the camera phone, that's why.
Prior to 2001 though, they didn't really exist. Back then whole mobile phone space was shifting along quite nicely with previous decade seeing the uptake of portable telephony devices explode as the hefty and expensive bricks associated with eighties Yuppies gradually morphed into convenient, stylish and most importantly, affordable, plastic pebbles.
Nokia reigned supreme thanks in part to its 3210, released in 1999 and the first device aimed squarely at young folks. A targeted marketing campaign saw the handset shift a staggering 160 million units and firmly cemented the Finnish manufacturer at the heart of the mobile game, turning what was once the preserve of the wealthy into a lifestyle choice that everyone could chose to make. Basically, in 1999, if you didn't have a Nokia, you certainly wanted one.
Just three years later though, Nokia would do something that would shift the mobile space in another direction entirely. Enter the Nokia 7650 - the first widely available camera phone. While there had been other mobile phones that featured cameras prior to this - Sharp had developed the J-SH04 for Japanese firm J-Phone two years previously - this device was the one that rocketed mobile photography into the mainstream.
The Nokia 7650 didn't exactly break sales records but heralded the birth of the high-end camera phone as a viable proposition. Retailing at €600 (£512), it certainly wasn't cheap but with a revolutionary for the time spec list including full colour display, 32-bit RISC processor clocked at 104MHz, 4MB memory and the first iteration of the Symbian OS, it inspired innovation from competitors and set the ball rolling for camera phones as we know them today.
Sony Ericsson took up the challenge with the Sony P800 in late 2002, a PDA-like flip phone with a VGA camera onboard and this was quickly followed in 2003 by Motorola's E365 candybar device, it too was loaded with a VGA snapper. Ever the innovators, it was Samsung that brought the first 1-megapixel mobile camera to market in 2003 and quickly followed that up with 2004's SCH-S250 - the world's first 5-megapixel camera phone.
The previously incomprehensible notion of mobile photography really began to snowball at this juncture up to the point where Nokia became the world's biggest selling digital camera brand in 2004, beating the likes of Nikon, Olympus and Fujifilm.
Fast forward a few years and the mobile space would see landmark developments in imaging technology including hitting the 10-megapixel milestone with Samsung's SCH-B600 in 2007, the first mobile camera with 3x optical zoom (Samsung again with 2007's G800), Nokia's incorporation of high-end Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash into the 12-megapixel Nokia N8 launched in 2010, and Sony smashing the 16-megapixel barrier with the Sony S006.
Then the smartphone happened. While what exactly constitutes a smartphone and the exact point of their arrival could be debated until the cows come home, let's say for argument's sake that Apple's first iPhone in 2007 galvanised the concept and made us all aware of what these devices are and can do (yes, we know there were all kinds of PDA hybrids and that Symbian had been plugging away for an age, and a little firm called RIM was rewriting the rulebook with its BlackBerrys).
Development of camera phone tech kind of reached a plateau at this juncture. Some might even say that it regressed - Apple's supposed genre defining iPhone featured a measly 2-megapixel lens - as manufacturers concentrated on all the lovely connectivity options and functionality they could pack into what had essentially become a computer in your pocket.
Sony Ericsson picked up the mantle aging in 2009, sticking an 8-megapixel camera with autofocus and an LED flash into its Android-powered Xperia X10 and from there, the race for smartphone imaging supremacy took off again. Apple gradually increased the megapixel count in subsequent iterations of its immensely popular iPhone, Nokia drew on its heritage as camera phone pioneers by incorporating Carl Zeiss optics into smartphone territory with the Microsoft-supported Lumia range and BlackBerry didn't really do anything until just recently.
As the smartphone playing field levelled, major player Samsung and the chasing pack comprising HTC, Sony (now divorced from long-time partner Ericsson), Motorola and LG all cancelled each other out as they strived to come up with points of difference within spec sheets across their range of top-end devices. So, camera tech again became a the field upon which the battle to stand out would be fought as the high-end in particular shifted focus away from large numbers on a piece of paper to unique features.
This sea change gave rise to useful features such as touch to focus, a myriad post-production options and filters, as well as developments in image processing fostered by improving CMOS sensors (the tiny processor-like things that convert light into electronic signals). All these things were happening alongside the development of social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and later, photosharing communities including Hipstamatic and the now ubiquitous Instagram.
As the smartphone era ushered in levels of instantaneous connectivity, users could share their photos in ways that were previously unheard of. Gone were the days of idly snapping away on a night out/holiday gettaway then laboriously dragging and dropping to a PC, only to have to wait an age as the resulting grainy pics uploaded to MySpace. Now, pictures can be instantly posted and pinged around the world in an instant, and the implications this has had for not only social relationships, but the worlds of journalism, eCommerce, and popular culture as a whole, were huge. But that's a feature for another day.
Nokia Lumia 1020 hands-on: Specs & First Impressions
So, how did we get to where we are today with Nokia combining a 41-megapixel sensor and a host of imaging capabilities previously reserved for professional camera equipment into a comercially available handset?
Well development continued to the point where top handset manufacturers created their own bespoke imaging technologies enabled by the advancements in chip technologies. A prime example of this can be found in HTC's ImageSense camera suite that launched on the One series of devices in 2012.
HTC One X review
A combination of hardware and software allowed users to pull of such photographic feats as dual-capture (record video footage and take still from within the same interface), auto-tracking (focus 'locked on' to moving objects within a frame), and automatic burst mode. All this was supplemented by the ImageSense hardware that enabled faster processing and an f2.0 aperture lens for improved low-light performance.
Samsung went on to innovate similar features on the Galaxy S3 and so began the current 'camera wars' that persist between manufacturers vying to find a point of difference between devices that are fairly evenly matched in terms of specs. The Samsung Galaxy S4 saw the advent of similar imaging tech for Samsung's class-leading series of Android devices - most notably the dual-shot mode - and the likes of BlackBerry and HTC pushed boundaries even further with the introduction of BlackBerry TimeShift and HTC Zoe respectively in BlackBerry 10 devices and the HTC One.
HTC One Review: 'One' to look out for?
BlackBerry Q10 review and latest prices
These image capture options saw the advent of object removal tools as well as the ability to cull GIF-like clips from captured shots. Again, Samsung's 'Animated Photo' feature on the Galaxy S4 aped this, but other than the three manufacturers mentioned here, OEMs have been slow to incorporate such things into their products.
While all this was going on, Nokia was taking a different tack. Still persisting with its Carl Zeiss optics, PureView loomed into view with the Lumia series and was centred around Optical Image Stabilisation and Nokia's own 'Lenses' add-ons that brought realtime augmented reality information to the fore. The uptake of its Window Phone-powered devices pales in comparison to the domination enjoyed by Samsung in the Android space but with unique innovations such as HERE City Lens, at least the firm is attempting to break the spec-war stalemate that appears to have developed recently.
What is Nokia PureView?
And that pretty much takes us up to where we are now. The PureView-laden Lumia 1020 looks to have shifted the goalposts once again and could herald the beginning of the end for the dedicated digital camera device. The rapid convergence between what was until quite recently two separate streams of technology is clear to see and if it continues at this rate, it mightn't be that far away that we see broadcast quality video integrated into the devices we all carry in our pockets. Whether the Lumia 1020 proves the catalyst for the next wave of imaging tech innovation remains to be seen, but if one thing is for sure, there are exciting times ahead.
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