Apple's iPhone 3GS - Camera

Apple have launched their 3rd generation iPhone. It sports a number of changes to its specification. One of these is the camera, the previous model's 2MP spec having been widely criticised by those who strive to find fault with the phone that has changed the industry! The new iPhone 3GS model sports a 3.2MP camera which is also capable of video and has additional auto focus, auto exposure and auto white levels. This will still be compared negatively against phones such as the Nokia N9x series having more than 5MP.

Some watchers will make the point that millions of extra pixels isn't everything which is certainly true, especially after a point ... unless you are taking photos which will be printed out at huge poster sizes which most people don't! Most users won't notice the difference between a 3MP photo and a 6MP picture, provided that other aspects such as exposure, light level and focus are good. And doubling the number of pixels in the camera increases the bill of materials cost for that component without making a great difference to the user experience. It also means that pictures taken consume more storage space than they need to ... how many people do you know with 6MP compact cameras who bother to reduce the resolution in order to fit more pictures on their finite memory cards?

But there is another more important point for Apple I believe. They understand the market they are in and the people who visit their stores and buy their products. Those people are not so interested in raw numbers, and technical details. They are more interested in what you can do with the product, how easy it is to use and what it looks like. Apple also stress the idea of sharing media like photos and video with others and make it easy to do so. The user experience of sharing over networks is much better with smaller file sizes. Apple are extremely well practised at getting the specification of their products right for their customers rather than competing on numbers with the specification of the competition.