back to article 5-megapix 'iPhone 4' set for June?

The fourth generation iPhone has already been spotted in the wild. It will debut on June 28. It will have a 5-megapixel camera. And it will contribute to the 40-45 million iPhones that Apple plans to sell next year. Or so says a flurry of recent reports. From MacRumors comes word than one iPhone developer has spotted a …

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  1. Brian 62

    itouch?

    Is this mystery manufacturer the same one that makes the ipod touch? Seems like an explanation for double the camera orders. Either that, or iPhone 4 will also have a front-facing camera that could be used for video conf, and the rear facing one for pics (though something so ugly as having 2 cameras in 1 device doesn't match Apple's MO)

  2. iMlite
    Jobs Horns

    Rumours upon rumours

    A 5 megapixel camera sounds about right. Fruity Hi-tech is about 2 to 3 years behind real Hi-tech. So, we can take it that the iPhone4 will have the specs of say a high end Nokia of 2 to 3 years ago. The questions are: what will the memory capacity be, will it have a totally updated firmware, will it have an extra shiny box?, and will it be more useful as a phone???The only certain thing is that the fan boys will be blinded to its inadequacies

    As for the iSlate, no need to bring that into the equation. The extra cameras could be for additional projected sales as the big fruit splatters itself over more than just the US customer base.

    1. Ted Treen
      Flame

      What a maroon...

      Don't like it?

      Then don't buy one, and STFU.

      That's the approach I take to Beemers, Microsoft & a fair few others.

      1. PsychicMonkey
        Jobs Halo

        not

        proving a point there at all.....

    2. Kenny Millar

      @Rumours upon rumours

      The thing is, that fruity tech is not 2 -3 years behind, but is actually delivering what people want.

      Nokia et al think that adding more and more tech will drive sales, and to some extent it does, but then people have actually ended up paying for the tech, and not getting much in the way of usability. Whereas fruity tech deliver usability in abundance - in fact the user experience gets highest priority, ahead of having the latest widget, camera or photon cannon. People like HTC, Nokia and Microsoft should start investing in usability and let THAT dictate the technology and not the other way around.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wow

    Not like they're behind the curve or anything, only lagging 7 megapixels. Perhaps this one will be able to send MMS and of course it will have that recently developed Apple innovation, 'cut n paste'...

    Maybe, shock horror, they'll actually get this one to make calls and not drop them left right and center?

    I can't wait.

    Oh, hang on, that should be I won't wait...

    1. Ivan Headache

      behind the curve?

      What are you talking about?

      My pro-quality SLR has 6.1 MegaPixels.

      I'd rather be using that than any phone - regardless of who makes it.

    2. Stuart Castle Silver badge

      Another one falling for the megapixel fallacy

      So, Apple are 7 megapixels behind the times? Guess what. Unless you regularly print A0 and above pictures, it actually makes little difference. A lot smaller difference than the quality of the optics in the camera. Mobile phone cameras are conveniant, but if you want quality you need to look at DSLRs.

      Am I an apple fan? Yes. Do I use my iphone's camera? Not usually. I don't have a DSLR, but the Compact I use gives far better pictures than any mobile I have used.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Still behind the curve.

        Of course, I also have a 6.1 MP DSLR, yes the optics make more difference than the number of pixels, I still use my older DSLR at 3MP IIRC and get really good results.

        In the chav world of mobile marketing, numbers win because most of the idiots don't understand what they mean. Most mobile users are more concerned about being able to brag with their phones features, number of minutesand inclusive texts.

        Still doesn't change the fact that the iPhone is a really nice MP3 player with a very mediocre phone and substandard camera glued onto it.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Megapixels = marketing

    Unless there is a decent bit of glass in front of the sensor the number of pixels is just another marketing feature for the mine is bigger than yours brigade.

    From another marketing point of view I can't see why Apple feel the need to go the magapixel route, the people who buy an iPhone will do so even if the camera function was a box brownie fixed on with a bit of velcro.

    1. Mark 65

      Exactamondo

      Unless there's also a decent sized photosite in the sensor the picture will be full of noise at anything other than super bright day natural lighting.

      The point about box brownies is appropriate as the iphone camera looks like a pinhole camera. There's no point in 5MP as iphone photos only look good on iphones - sync them to a computer and they look like shite.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    "some Cupertino engineer"

    "some Cupertino engineer" = Steve Jobs

  6. JWS
    FAIL

    What year?

    What a joke, again just highlights how far behind the IdiotPhone is vs. the competition. And goes to show how stupid the buyers are for taking that kind of arrogance from Apple. Now the new Google phone looks a damn sight more impressive, however neither have keyboards, so are just toys.

    1. chr0m4t1c
      Joke

      Is that the official definition?

      Anything without a keyboard is a toy?

      Wow, I hope no-one works out that our server room is full of toys.

      Unless you only meant phones, in which case you might want to tell Nokia et al that most of their lineups are toys, which is probably why no-one buys them.

      Tell me, are you one of those people who uses a hammer to drive in screws?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Comparing apples with turkeys...

        I am one of those people who uses a hammer to drive a point home. But only into jeebus phone fanbois.

    2. Kenny Millar

      @ What Year

      You are wrong.

      It's all about usability and Apple are years ahead of everyone else in that front.

      What use is the best tech if it's a pigging pig in a poke ?

    3. Gulfie
      FAIL

      Behind?

      Tell me sir, if the iPhone is so far behind the competition, why is it selling so well? Frankly the only substandard part of my iPhone 3G is the camera. I've yet to use any phone camera for anything other than the odd casual shot (my Canon D40 is the dog's teabags) so frankly I don't care. It does everything I need, it does it better than any other phone I've used to date, and it has one of the best browsing experiences around.

      Now if you'd make a convincing argument around missing Flash technology, you'd have a sensible discussion on your hands...

  7. Jerome 0

    How generous

    It's nice that Apple are finally stepping up to 5 megapixels, while the rest of the industry has been on 8 megapixels in their flagship products for a while now, but will the camera still be dreadful? After all, it's the lens and sensor quality that matter, not the megapixel count.

  8. Steve Evans

    But...

    Are they gonna put a damn flash on it this time, or are we doomed to spend the rest of our lives looking at mobile upload pictures in facebook with really badly lit faces?

  9. DEAD4EVER
    WTF?

    5 megapixal iphone 4

    yep and i bet any money if it was on pay as you go if this turns out to be true i bet it will be more exspensive than the 3gs is it will get to a point where the iphone will be out of price range to pay for it. sorry but this phone isnt worth it even if they did increase the megapixals that would mean more price to it. oviously apple fanboys continue to buy expensive stuff that isnt worth its price tag sorry but theres other phones out there you know your only paying for apples app store which is a waste of time whats the point in getten apps for your phone then complain about battery life jeese pathetic

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      this one time at band camp..

      ..someone posted a really rambling and incoherent post with massive garbled run-on sentences which made very little sense at all and seemed to be suffering from a terminal case of homophonophobia and even if you untangled what the jaysus h. wossname he was talking the sum total of human enlightenment would in no way be advanced and his English teacher cried quietly into her hands while sad kittens were sacrificed to the gods of technological insight shortly before they died of anoxia after trying to read out the unholy turdspurt of a post for which he was responsible..

      ...aaand breathe.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Not optimistic at all

    "...a doubling in sales in the next year may be a tad optimistic"

    Not if the phone ends up on Verizon's network.

  11. Quxy
    FAIL

    resolution != image quality

    But what's the point? The image quality in the current iPhone is limited by its poor optics rather than by its image sensor. The effective resolution of my 3GS pictures is significantly worse than those from my ancient 1.5 Mpx Sony digital still camera, which I still use for technical documentation.

    Unless Apple gets serious about the lens (and flash, for that matter) -- think Sony Satio -- iPhone image quality is going to remain squarely in amateurish YouTube territory.

    1. myhandle

      Re:resolution != image quality

      Exactly! So what do you gain? Nothing. What do you loose? The extra memory the photos take up to provide you with no gain in resolution. This is a feature that takes away from you. An Immodium minus feature.

  12. Grumpytom
    Paris Hilton

    Tetchy

    Woa!

    There's some tetchy people out there, who the F needs all those pixels and a lens like a piece of crap passing next to no light and has serious aberrations built in.

    But photographs! - Give me a break.

    My iPhone has in more than a year taken about 100 snapshots, meanwhile my camera does that many in a short shooting session - and they're RAW too!

    These cameras in whosoevers' phones are no more than a useful fringe benefit, next the whiners you expect Wharfdale speaker like output too.

    It's a phone with some apps, deal with it.

    Off to do dome nudies with Paris - using a big Nikon - that's a camera not a phone - don't want fuzzies

    1. Ted Treen
      Thumb Up

      A breath of fresh air...

      Common sense?

      Have Grumpytom mounted on the wall as an example to most.

      Good man!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Paris Hilton

      Ask her to wax then...

      blah de blah

  13. Craig 12

    more cameras?

    Forward facing camera please jobsy!

  14. pkiula
    WTF?

    Yeah, the camera is the REAL problem! (NOT!)

    What drivel, Apple. Fix the basics. SMS and keyboard and calling and forwarding. Fast-typing sucks (compared to a super-productive device such as BlackBerry). Make multitasking a priority, otherwise there's no "smart" in this dumb smartphone. Camera is the last thing anyone gives two figs about.

    1. SirTainleyBarking
      Flame

      That may be the case

      But the camera fitted to my Crackberry, whilst only 3.2 megapixels is actually quite good for a phone camera. It also has a good ability to focus down close which makes it ideal for photo note taking

      If I want proper quality, I'll stick to film

  15. Si 1
    Jobs Halo

    Good timing

    My contract runs out around March/April time, so I will be free to dump O2 and get a new phone right around the time this comes out... The timing is hardly surprising though, there's been a new model around that time of the year every year.

    Now if I can just find a provider willing to give me a contract that isn't 2 frigging years long. They all seem to have abandoned 12 and 18 months as their contract periods and are locking people in to 24 months.

    I couldn't give a damn about the camera though. As long as it still does email, games, sat nav, texting, web surfing, etc, etc I'll be very happy.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    iPhone 4.5

    Obviously Apple are not going to give the iPhone 4 an 8 megapixel camera, if they did that then what could they possibly upgrade the iPhone 4.5 to?

    The iPhone goes a bit like this...

    1st Gen - 2G mobile phone, hideously expensive, very behind the times - fanboys eat it up

    2nd Gen - Add's 3G to the table, still very behind the times, fanboys who bought the 2G go out and buy the 3G, hideously expensive.

    3rd Gen - 3GS adds limited functionality, still behind the times tech wise, fanboys who bought the 2G, then the 3G go out and get the 3Gs too, Apple make a small fortune from gullible people

    4th Gen - 4G, upgrades the camera to 5 mega pixels, doesn't really offer anything new that wasn't available in the 1st gen after a software update (except 3G)

    5th Gen - 4.5G, adds an 8 megapixel camera, adverts go on about recording videos and the like, as if the iPhone is the only phone capable of doing that.

    6th Gen (8 months after 4th gen) - Adds wireless N to the mobile.

    Basically put, Apple are having a laugh, they *know* iDiots will buy their mobiles even though they add nothing to each iteration. They release them knowing lots of people will still be in contract on the original mobile so the 12 month contracts will soon be coming to an end, so a renewed contract with a new iPhone keeps the telco happy, and Apple in money.

    If Apple were serious, they would release a mobile that is current, 8MP camera with quality lense, Wireless N, bluetooth keyboard, you know, lots of stuff that current phones have, instead of releasing a new phone every 8 months with minor upgrades.

    1. Mark 65

      Wireless N

      This would be nice as it would give a much greater range when on the home network. Not sure what the size overhead is with having n and g in the small box though as a lot of people will only have 802.11g wireless.

      The main problem with the iphone is, in backward countries like Australia with no extensive wifi hotspot network, 3G can be painful at times when you've gotten used to the responsiveness offered by wireless g at home. I think most smartphones have gotten beyond the networks that they're on, hence the cloud functionality in the UK.

    2. Gulfie
      Stop

      Nice rant but...

      ... all the 2G owners got a free upgrade to 3G and were able to keep their 2G's to boot. Yes the 2G was hideously out of date, but what part of the 3G was so behind the times? Battery life, as any PDA user would have told you, is par for the course. Camera? Yes, OK, agreed, but not really a deal killer.

      I can see why you're posing AC, after all, this is a fair amount of bile...

      As any hardware manufacturer can testify: if you get your product right, it will sell well. Just because Apple aren't content to sit on their laurels in the way that Nokia and Motorola have done, is no reason to be bitter.

      As far as minor upgrades go, Apple are doing what everybody else does. Its not good for business in a saturated market to put absolutely everything into one device. You trickle-feed features into your phones so that people have a reason to upgrade.

  17. Ari 1
    Pint

    wow

    ..I mean, you guys are just not getting it.

    Apple sells relatively expensive hardware. Yes

    Apple often trails others in specifications. Yes

    Apples products still work more smoothly than the competitors. Yes

    The iphone is no exception. I've used one, and it's.. a phone. It's also a surprisingly easy to use PDA type device with all functionality well thought out. It really perfects what Palm was doing before Palm dropped the ball. Simple, usable, powerful (in use). A windows mobile device is none of those. An android device is a few of those, but doesn't come close, yet.

    I recently got to play with two models of HTC phones, one a HTC Hero, the other a HTC Magic (android OS).

    Both were more powerful than the iPhone. Both had much better specs and a better camera. Both owners wanted my iPhone. The owner of the Magic had switched from a iPhone 1. He expressed his disappointment and wished he had bought an iPhone 3GS instead of the HTC unit.

    That was due to little things. Clunky interface, weird and inconsistent behaviour, annoying music player behaviour and a selection of other things.

    Personally I found the Magic to be nice, but unpolished. The Hero just sucked balls.

    And the stupid "idiotPhone" type comments above just show a lack of understanding. Thanks to attitudes like that we still have atrocious interfaces like in The GIMP. Yes, it is powerful. Yes it is almost enough to replace photoshop. Yes it completely sucks because the developers don't think that serious work in interface and usability design matter. Unusable, but powerful, mess. Another example of "the interface is good enough for our engineers so it must be good enough for our customers" is Windows Control Panel. Doesn't matter which version, and Win7 is also included.

    The reason people pay more for an Apple product is that the engineers at apple, the designers, and Jobs, are all insane on the details. These details mean that the everyday experience of using apple products is just that little less frustrating.

    I used to be a PC technician and bought myself a mac to try out. I now get shudders of annoyance when I need to fix my old XP machine. XP will be replaced by some Linux distro soon. Even Ubuntu is usually more usable than XP (except when you have to compile drivers from source)

    Now for a beer

    1. Steve Evans

      Not sure...

      I know 3 people with iPhones... One is a complete fanboy, so of course he wouldn't tell me if he ever had a problem, but I did laugh when he dropped it and cracked the screen.

      The other two are girls who just bought it because it was the "in thing", neither of them are technical. One constantly complains about it freaking out and doing weird shit (in her words she hates it) and the other seems to have an iPhone (or maybe O2) induced text message delay. I've sat there next to her this week, both with a good signal and sent messages between my Nokia and her iPhone. Sometimes they arrive instantly, other times they take a few minutes. In one case a message took 2 hours, and sometimes they've just gone missing. Messages from her to me turn up pretty much as you'd expect, within a few seconds.

      Now I don't know if this in a problem with the Orange/O2 interconnect or whatever, but until I proved this to her in person (and showed her my sent history) she thought I'd been ignoring her!

      The iPhone is bad for your social life!

      Sure the iPhone has a great interface, but I still don't trust the technical bit underneath it all. The half hearted attempt they made of implementing the SMS functionality in version 1 is enough to make me worry.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Paris Hilton

        Oddly enough..

        I know a few iphone users.

        Now they've had their iPhones a while they all hate them, apart from the Mac user who bought it because he's a fanboi and won't admit it's a steaming turd. It's funny watching him redialling and trying to keep a calm face as his 'My first Mobile' disconnects him or locks up or just plain dies.

        I also do some work for a UK mobile phone retailer, their staff tell me that the majority of jeebus phone customers only buy it because it's fashionable, they also tell me they get plenty of complaints about it dropping calls and having a crappy camera with a few MMS/SMS related ones thrown in for good measure.

        Fashion, vapid and substanceless, serving only to satiate the idiots who are easily lead as part of the herd.

        Paris, vapid but she could satiate me.

  18. Robert E A Harvey
    Jobs Horns

    Capitalism red in tooth and claw

    Bit by bit they are converting the iphone into what people thought it was all along.

    Clever, though. Selling the victims a new one every year, when they are on 2 year contracts.

    Needless to say, I don't have one.

  19. Gordon 10
    Pint

    Ari1 talking sense

    As above. The iphone is a sucess because the of the attention to detail of the UI, not because of the functionality or lack of.

    The iphone is the best smartphone I have owned - period.

    Multi-tasking - dont need it.

    Mega pixels - dont care - 99% of Phone cameras are shite.

    My iPhone is more useful on a day to day basis than any other phone I've owned.

    Delays on the tube/trains - iphone warns me.

    Something to listen to/watch/read /play on the commute - iphone entertains me.

    And it does it all with the minimum of fuss and effort.

    For *core* smartphone functionality - the iphone just works - get over it.

    Have a pint on me ARI1.

    1. CitizenErazed
      Stop

      Multitasking

      'For *core* smartphone functionality - the iphone just works'

      So I can ssh using my iPhone without jailbreaking it? It's a smartphone - so I can customise the interface beyond moving icons about - without jailbreaking it? Can I have Spotify syncing away another 300 song playlist while I play sudoku?

      Three functions that are important to me on a smartphone, the iPhone does none of them.

      1. ispablo

        ssh

        actually yes. you can ssh from the iphone without jailbreaking it.

  20. mccp
    Megaphone

    Megapixels, shmegapixels

    It's all complete marketing bullshit.

    Go away and learn about resolution before grumbling about the lack of them and in the meantime look here for stunning pictures taken by a pro with a 3Mb iPhone camera:

    http://www.chasejarvis.com/#s=0&mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&p=5&a=0&at=0

    1. Martin Fowler
      Thumb Up

      Quality Photos

      Your right that its all marketing rubbish, a lot of my friends believe that its the amount of megapixels and not the quality of the hardware and specifically the the lens which make a good camera.

      Me being the resident geek, i am trying to convince them differently. In my view, anyone who moans that there isnt enough megapixel's is on a par with an obsessive fanboi, only happy when they have the latest SE phone or nokia with a ridiculous megapixel count.

      Rant over

      Quality photos by the way

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    5MP cameras in phones

    Although they are never going to be as good as DSLR (no, really), increasing pixel count does improve quality, up to a point (and that point is higher than 5MP). More pixels (as long as the sensor and lens is of decent quality) means better image processing can be done, although doubling pixel count doesn't double quality, it does improve.

    Some 5MP camera phones produce exceptional pictures and video (See the Instinct Dash HD, currently state of the art I believe), given the limitations of the sensor.

    1. Matt Bridge-Wilkinson
      Thumb Up

      Sigma DP1

      The sigma dp1 is effectively 4.6 megapixels in resolution but the shots are some of the sharpest I have seen. Certainly sharper than my 12.1mp Canon G9. Megapixels only help with the right glass in front of them and on the right sensor.

  22. Kenny Millar

    Not the iPad

    The extra cameras are going into iPod and Ipod touch devices.

    There, I said it.

  23. Matt Bridge-Wilkinson
    WTF?

    If you knew about cameras you would know that 4mp is plenty for a phone...

    As a photographer, I get very bored of the general perception that a camera is good if it has high megapixels. As above posters have commented camera quality if not just about how many MPs you have, in fact its one of the last factors in the quality of your photo.

    The quality of the lens is the primary consideration, then the sensor. You can have a 20mp sensor but if your lens is made of low quality glass your photos will suck. Yeah you can print them to a massive size but they will still suck big time.

    A camera phone sensor will also be very tiny and cramming ten mp into that tiny phone sized sensor will just increase noise, sharpness and actually decrease the picture quality.

    A 4 or 5 mp camera will happily print your image at about A4 size without any loss in quality. Why would you want a 10mp camera phone? You want to print at A3 or 20"x16" from a phone picture? I very much doubt it, the lens and sensor would never be upto the job. in the world of cameras some manufacturers have actually used less MP on new cameras after realising its not always better.

    Very bored of all the people using the megapixels as an argument to put item down. It is frankly not really valid a valid argument. Its a marketing ploy by the camera manufacturers and you my friends have fallen for it.

  24. Volker Hett
    Thumb Down

    Phone as a camera?

    To all those who want to buy a phone as a camera, you might want to look up diffraction and after that we might be able to understand each other when we talk about resolution.

    To all those who want an ultraportable computer in a phone, have a look on an ancient Psion Series V and see what fun it is to organize your contacts, do calculations with spreadsheets and type a thesis at a beach running on two AA batteries for a week with a 18MHz CPU and a 640x200 16 grayscale screen.

    With this said, an iPhone is a very good phone, ok, a bit short on battery life, and a decent music player. I can controll most of it with the buttons on my cars steering wheel while it is charging in the glove compartment, callers and titles are shown on my car stereos display etc.pp.

    It just bl**dy works as a music player and a phone, perfect! I had Win Mobile devices, Sony Ericsson m600i and P1i, Nokia E something and even a BB. The iPhone is the phone which just works as a phone without looking, and it makes a pretty good music player as well.

    Only complaint, it doesn't work with Linux, at least up to now but there are some promising applications just around the corner.

    I have some 15 real cameras, my 50 year old Leica M2 with the 51 year old Summicron blows every phone camera out of the water, even current compact digital cameras can't touch it. And that is my benchmark as an everyday walkaround camera! When I go out to take serious pictures, I have a DSLR with a sensor not much smaller than most phones!

    When I have to calculate spreadsheets type a document or anything, I want something showing more than two or three cells at the time, make my display 1280x800 or bigger! And better make it 13" as well!

    But for my phone calls, I take the iPhone over any "smartphone" all the time, it's the best phone I had since the Nokia 6310. Ok, I just got a Palm Pre from my company, this might be a bit better, it's smaller and I can have the messenger running while reading my mail, but I can do that on my netbook , too.

    Oh, navigation, I forgot about navigation, that's build into my car, works fine, even in a tunnel because it's coupled to all those sensors in the car and can plot my way when there's no GPS reception.

  25. Defiant
    Alert

    Hmm

    The 3.2MB camera on the Nokia is better than the 5MB one because the images are compressed so much so it will be interesting if the iphone is the same

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    wow

    I'm not sure were you guys get your data at but you fallen victim to simple marketing scams. All of those high megapixel phones are quite awful. Here's the reality stick, the iphone is the best consumer phone hands down, the blackberry is the best business phone and the droid is the best techie phone. I wouldn't take the best nokia phone for free.

  27. rcdicky
    Go

    Flash - and not the app!!!

    Only thing I REALLY want to see on the next one is a real flash for the camera!

    Don't think they need to up the mega-pixel at all tbh - as ppl have pointed out above, the only thing ppl really use their phone camera for is drunken pics uploaded to facebook. Which the current (3.2MP on the 3GS aint it?) is more than enough for.

    So a real flash please, not a retina burning LED either lol. Dark pub/club + LED Flash = Epic squinting

  28. Simon 4

    Like I said when they launched 3GS....

    ...will it have a flash?

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