Over the last half a decade or so, as the quality of cameras on mobile phones is getting better, more and more users are moving away from buying cameras and are instead focusing on using mobile phones with inbuilt cameras. In this converged world, it is increasingly common to see the young customer take snaps from their cellphones, and share them with the networked community on the move. As on date, phones with 1 mega pixel to 12 mega pixels cameras are now available to the customers at price points which are continuously dropping.

What we are witnessing here is a quite revolution in the mobile phone capability of becoming a powerful camera device. From the vintage ?no camera? phones to now 12 mega pixels phones, the transition has been quite dramatic. When the camera cellphones were launched, they were just a fancy add-on to mobile phones rather than a fully functional and useful tool. But presently the capture and print quality of photos snapped with mobile phone cameras is getting to be comparable to that of digital cameras.

It is important to understand the technology behind the camera phone and how this helps the consumer in making the right choice of his device. Low-end phones have something called the CIF format which is very low resolution and not made for printing of the pictures taken. This is followed by the VGA technology or camera which is of medium quality resolution and can print pictures up to 3 x 5 inch.

The superior camera quality is the mega pixel and ranges from 1 MP to 12 MP. This is good for printing more than 10 x 12 inch photos.

Basically the camera quality is determined through the quality of print that can be taken out, and with the naked eye the pictures should look as good as in LCD displays of the phones.

This is not all, in order to bring focus on the camera and finally the picture quality, branded camera lenses have come into being. For example, Nokia uses Carl Zeiss Lens, LG and others use Schneider-Kreuznach lens and so forth. Motorola has been using Kodak software technology to optimise the quality of the pictures taken from their phones (some models) as Sony Ericsson has being doing with their proprietary Cyber Shot technology.

With the increased customer expectation, the technology on camera phones is getting increasingly more sophisticated. This gave rise to phenomena like Auto Focus in the cameras (the camera self focuses at a half press of the shutter button), fixed focus like the new age technology EDOF?Extended Depth of Field. This is the technology being used by brands like Nokia for their new age phones that are slim in nature.

To give the customers the flexibility to bring the objects closer, brands have given them digital and optical zoom. Digital zoom refers to cutting or cropping a portion of the captured image and then putting it back together up to full resolution. This leads to lower image quality.

Increasingly, features like Flash are also being incorporated in phones. All high-end devices prefer to have a zenon flash. These high-end phones have anti-shake, burst photography, panorama stitching etc.

Utility of camera phones is not limited to home use only as with the flexibility to MMS, email pictures and video clips, the use of phones has vastly broadened. The use of camera phones is expected to grow as video on cellphones becomes popular.

Over time, as technology improves, we will see the emergence of camera-enabled mobile applications, such as bar code readers, enabling customers to share personal details on e-business cards, etc. There could well be mobile webcams and video-surveillance applications. People on the move will use their camera phones to capture videos and pictures of events on the move.

The overall message is clear: the continuing trends in camera quality and capability brings major implications?and opportunities?for every segment of the mobile industry. More and more of us are going to say ?cheese? while facing mobile phones in the days ahead.

?The writer is CEO, Spice Hotspot