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July 28, 2009
Lumia

Optics rule the camerphone race



GLOBAL – Last week we set out to discover what you felt was the most important aspect of a cameraphone and with a resounding win, Optics came out on top. With 45 per cent of the vote Top Quality Optics beat fast autofocus and capture by 28 per cent. Unnamed features falling into the “others” category took third place with just 12 per cent of the vote. Behind those three, megapixels, flash, storage, zoom, aperture controls, photo effects and online sharing all boasted less than eight per cent of the vote each, with the bottom three sharing just three per cent of the vote.

Optics then, it seems plays a huge role amongst Conversations readers when it comes to cameras on devices. Opinions in the comments varied through supporting the overall winner and highlighting some other features individual users felt were also important. Megapixels, which took just eight per cent of the vote, don’t seem to hold much importance though when the other elements (optics, variable aperture, flash control) are in place its arguable that the field changes somewhat there. (Check out yesterday’s piece on the N86 8MP).

The comments section provided plenty of insight into what the “others” category could be made up of, with both “bright screen in ‘broad daylight'” suggested alongside 720p video capability. Aside from the quality of the image, face recognition, ccd shift and 5X optical zoom were also cited as potential features. That, to me, shows the level of expectation from today’s cameraphones, given that we’d have been happy with those features in a mid-range compact only a couple of years ago.

To close it off, Roid says it best when he cites “Good, quality results” as the most important feature of a cameraphone. And to achieve that? Well, all the other things need to be in place.

Thanks to lupixxx for his suggestion of “what do people expect from new firmware” which is going to form the topic for this week’s poll.

At the time of writing this review we had 366 votes cast.