No. Despite the Washington Post’s provocative headline, Apple’s no more “secretly working on an iPhone camcorder” now than they were “secretly working on an iPhone camera” in 2006.
Technology advances. Early digital cameras had very low resolution, now they’re in the double-digits for megapixels. When VGA cameras were no longer of any value as stand-alone products, they were integrated into cellphones. Now 2, 3.5, 5 megapixel, and even higher resolution optics are becoming likewise obsolete as anything but integrated options, and so are finding their way into the iPhone, Nokia, or SonyEricsson devices.
Those same camera kits have been used by other smartphones to shoot video for a while now. And as the low-end, highly-pocketable stand-alone devices like the Flip turn their sights to HD, the older, lower-resolution technologies get integrated away.
It’s likely Apple will provide video shooting, editing, and sharing in the next generation iPhone (we’ve seen lots of screen shots to confirm that), and fans of the iPhone, low-end camcorders, convergence devices will no doubt celebrate. Others will keep their 1080p units handy…
At least until 2011 when Apple and RED announce their partnership to produce the iPhone 4K (2160p)… on Verizon…
(Joking!)
There have been a lot of rumors lately about the next generation of iPhone hardware having a 3.2 megapixel camera, but right now we have to deal with what has been given to us: a decent 2 megapixel camera with zero features.
That brings us to a great post that we noticed today on PCMAG.com, 22 Ways to Make Your iPhone a Better Camera. One of the most useful apps they list has to be Photogene. [iTunes Link] This app allows you to:
- Enhance photos with multiple color adjustment options and a sharpen filter.
- Crop and straighten.
- Add fun effects like text balloons, frames or special filters
Be sure to check out PCMAG.com’s article for a boatload of tips and apps to make the best with your iPhone’s camera!
Posted on Tuesday, Apr 14, 2009 by Jeremy Sikora
File Under:From the Forums, News, Regular Features; Tags: 3g, blackberry storm, camera, edge, flash, From the Forums, iPhone, sync
Lately the forums have been on fire and leading up to another iPhone release it is bound to be one wild ride. So now is a perfect time to get yourself registered and join in on the conversation.
Just yesterday Rene started a interesting thread, Are You Running Your iPhone 3G on EDGE and Why? While I understand why some of you may choose to EDGE over 3G, for me, I like to live dangerously, 3G or go home. How about you? Stop by and let Rene know what you think.
This next thread was started by Crackberry veteran forum moderator, Duvi. He simply wants to know, do you think the next iPhone will come with a flash for the camera? Feel free to speculate all you’d like on that one. I’m going with no, it will not have a flash.
Next up we have a thread that yours truly started, it’s simply about the latest iPhone rumors. Is there an EDGE only iPhone in the works? How about a CDMA version for China? And before all of you Verizon hopefuls start to get exited – no, a CDMA version from China would not work on the Verizon network. They use different frequencies. Thoughts?
Poor RIM, I can’t remember such a hyped phone that pretty much just flopped from the very beginning. Enter the BlackBerry Storm. It seems like the in thing to do these days is ditch your Storm for an iPhone 3G. Not a bad move in our opinion and we welcome forum member whsingleton to the good side!
You heard that the App Store is approaching 1 billion app downloads right? Well you could win a $10,000 iTunes gift card and Dizzy wants to know, what would you do with a $10,000 iTunes gift card?!
Our last thread for today comes to us from Ivoryplum. Ivoryplum wants to know what is the average sync time with iTunes? I honestly can’t complain with my syncing. How about you?
So there you have it folks, some really good threads for all of you to check out. Just remember to register first!
See you on the forums!
Digitimes (via MacRumors) has put together a list of which supplier is providing what part — they think! — for Apple’s next generation iPhone, ever-increasingly assumed to be announced at WWDC in June. No huge surprises, with iPhone 2G and 3G stalwart Infineon continuing to make the baseband (guess a home-spun PA Semi chip isn’t entirely replacing them yet), and Samsung to provide the NAND Flash storage.
Those hyped about the rumors of a possible 5.0 megapixel camera on board, however, take note of the 3.2 spec noted above. No replacing those Canon 5D Mark II’s yet!
While “patent peeping” shows what Apple might be doing in the far flung future, the equally voyeuristic “job watching” gives a slightly better idea of what’s going to be happening in the now and soon. With that in mind, following up on rumors of the next generation iPhone packing a 3.5 or 5 megapixel camera, it’s nice to see Apple looking for a Camera Project Manager and Camera Design Engineer.
AppleiPhoneApps.com points out:
The most intriguing part of the job listing is that they mention integrating a camera into an iPod as well.
Could it simply be a boilerplate mixup, or is the iPod touch 3,1 (likely to debut this fall at the next iPod/Music Special Event) going to be packing it’s own megapixel surprise?
Digitimes is reporting… what many others have been rumoring about the next gen iPhone and it’s camera. 3.5 megapixels, according to their “market sources” are bound to get bundled in if/when Apple shows off new iPhone 2,1 hardware at WWDC this year.
What’s even more fantastical is that a 5 megapixel camera is also rumored to be on its way to another Apple product this year. New iSight for the built-ins? Heh. That’s no fun. Gotta be for the next next gen iPhone 3,1, right? Or the iTablet? iNetbook? iYaiyai?!
Rumor season has only just begun folks!
[Via iPhonebuzz/Engadget Mobile]
One of Dieter’s longest longings for the iPhone was the ability just to start typing to search. Just turn the phone on and start typing to launch a device-wide query for all your contacts, emails, events, etc.
Well, it looks like iPhone OS 3.0 finally delivers for him, and all of us. The new iPhone 3.0 Settings > General > Home Button preference page expands on the iPhone 2.0 options of Home, Phone Favorites, and iPod with the two new, much appreciated additions:
Primarily an on-the-go photographer? Just set this option and the Camera is always just a double-click of Home away. Mobile accomplisher like Dieter, choose Search and with a double-click you can immediately start typing in Spotlight to launch Apps or find your data.
Boom.
The Griffin Clarifi Case for iPhone 3G is available from The iPhone Blog Store for $29.95. If you are looking for a case that enhances your close-up iPhone camera photos, is slim and dockable then this case might be for you. Let’s see how it measures up after the break! Read the rest of this entry »
Apple’s new iPhoto 09 will use the geo-tag data recorded by the iPhone 3G’s camera to map out the locations of your pictures. But what if you’re no using the iPhone for all your pictures? What if you have a regular old point-and-shoot or even a DSLR without GPS? One approach would be to use a stand-alone GPS to record your position and then cross-reference the time-stamp on your photos to add in the location data later. And, hey, the iPhone just happens to have that GPS, and it looks like a control panel found by TidBITS (via Ars Technica) in iPhoto 09 hints that Apple might be adding that functionality in the future.
Since recording Geo-Tag information would require some form of GPS running in the background, we may not see this until a future iPhone firmware update, perhaps 3.0 in June?
Still, it’s nice to see more clues as to just what Apple might be considering…
Any of you looking to add some life to your iPhone’s camera with some new options? It is no secret that the camera lacks any type of features besides point and click. So once again, where Apple let us down, a 3rd party developer comes to our rescue.
Now let me introduce you to Pano. Pano was created by Debacle Software, and enables you to take panoramic photos using the iPhone’s camera app. Here’s how it works:
For Pano, stitching photos together is a three-step process. First, it uses pattern-matching techniques to find out exactly how each pair of adjacent photos overlaps, and then it finds the best way to align them. Second, Pano applies a colour-correction gradient across each pair of photos to correct for the iPhone camera’s autoexposure and white balancing. Finally, all the photos are blended together and the image cropped to a neat rectangle. Voila! All in a matter of seconds.
Pano is now available in the App Store with a price tag of $2.99. It really is a worthy application for what it does. If you use your iPhone for taking photos I definitely recommend checking this one out.
(Via TUAW)
