Camera Phone Megapixels – Don’t Believe The Hype

You can now buy camera mobile phones with as many as 14 megapixels. Although most camera phone handsets come with around 8 megapixels, many consumers are bound to ask if such big jumps in mobile technology really make that much difference for most average users. Is it worth spending the extra money to get a higher megapixel camera, even if you are a bit trigger happy?

Megapixels are the most quoted measure of the quality of a digital camera, including those built into mobile phones. They refer to the number of image sensors on the camera lens. A megapixel equals one million pixels, so a two megapixel camera has two million sensors.

Are These The Same As The Pixels On A Monitor Or Television?

Technically, no. In a Television, a pixel is a single “dot” that can be one of several colors. Whereas on a camera lens, each pixel/image sensor only records one color (red, green or blue). So it takes three camera “pixels” to produce the information for one TV screen pixel or dot.

How Does A Mobile Phone Camera Resolution Compare With HD?

Comparisons can prove technical as the technologies and applications are different, but a digital camera would need a resolution of about 2.4 megapixels to produce an image big enough to fill a standard HD display. (The image wouldn’t fit the full width of the screen as digital cameras normally take shots in a 4:3 ratio, compared with the 16:9 widescreen of HDTVs.)

You also need to bear in mind that a HD TV screen counts the number of pixels and not the size of each pixel. Therefore viewing an identical image that looks clear and sharp on your computer screen might appear blurred on a big widescreen high definition TV.

Are More Megapixels Always Better?

It depends. Although a camera with more megapixels will give a sharper image, there are many other factors that can determine the quality of the images produced. The main factor is lens quality which tends to be lower in phone cameras due to size restrictions. A second critical factor is the camera flash which is often a Xenon version on newer phones. These give off a brighter flash than older LED versions and therefore better pictures.

What Other Features Can Improve Quality?

Optical focus will zoom in by physically adjusting parts of the lens. This gives much better results than digital zoom, which simply takes the selected part of the image in view and blows it up.

Although optical zoom is a rare feature on camera phones and most will simply have a fixed focus or digital zoom, models with an autofocus feature will attempt to increase the image quality of the most important areas of the picture such as faces in a group shot.

How Many Megapixels Is Best?

For the occasional snapshot, the 2 megapixels you’ll get almost as standard on anything but the cheapest phone should do. If you want the phone to effectively take the place of a regularly-used digital camera, you’ll probably want at least the 5 megapixels that is becoming standard on new smartphones. There are phones with cameras up to 14 megapixels, though by this point the inherent limitations of a camera phone may outweigh the benefits of an increased pixel count.

You can find out more about the various features of the latest phones in this camera phone buying guide.