Apple starts pushing the “megapixel myth?”
When I saw this quote by Steve Jobs at this week’s London event I had a flashback:
The [iPhone] camera is great. More megapixels don’t make a better camera, the iPhone is actually a great camera especially with great lighting.
Oh good I thought… It’s back to the PowerPC vs x86 days and the megahertz myth. Here’s the problem: I concede the above remark is true, if evasive. All the pixels in the world evidently don’t help most camera phones take a decent picture when the subject is in motion or poor light.
… But it’s not about what a few know, is it? It’s about what most people believe, and the MHz argument pretty much fell on deaf ears in 2001. Simply put, people expect that the numbers marketed to them mean something, and bigger = better.
What’s more, when I had a play with an iPhone recently I thought the camera was poor. Laggy, awkward to use (because of the software trigger on the touch screen). No flash (so “great lighting” might be hard to find – forget about taking it to a gig).
What it needs is a campaign of proving its quality by direct comparison, and upgrade the sensor to satisfy the uneducated consumer. iPhone is expensive compared to a Nokia N95 (£360 dearer over 18 months), and only looks tempting if you consider it a worthy replacement for your phone, iPod and digital camera.
At the moment, it’s two out of three at best.
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