A short history of the camera phone

The term camera phone commonly refers to cellphones with a built in digital camera, that allows it to capture stills and short video clips, store them, and share them with other devices and users through wireless communications technologies.

The first mobile picture phone prototype, entitled the Intellect, was invented in 1993 by Daniel A Henderson, and now resides in the Smithsonian Museum of American History. The Intellect was a hand held cell phone with a large monochrome display that could receive and display digital picture and video data sent by a wireless transmitter, and pioneered many of the technologies and protocols that were to find their way into the modern camera phone.

Other early experiments with wireless image sharing in conjunction with mobile telephony included Apple’s Videophone/PDA in 1995, and several prototype digital camera/mobile phone combinations demonstrated by Kodak and Olympus in the mid 90s. However, none of these devices were capable of connecting to the internet wirelessly, which was to prove a crucial development as it allowed instant media sharing with anyone regardless of their location.

The first camera phone to be able to do this, the Sharp J-SH04, was released commercially in Japan in 2001, with a US release the following year.

Needless to say, the camera phone was to prove a huge success, and by 2006, over half of all the mobile phones in circulation were cameraphones, which spelled the end for two of the worlds leading camera makers, Minolta and Konica.

By the beginning of 2009, there were over two billion camera phones in circulation worldwide.

The Tsunami disaster of 2005 was the first major world news event where the majority of the footage used as the news broke was filmed by citizens on camera phones, rather than by professional camera crews.

This is expected to become a more common occurrence as time goes on and cameraphones become even more ubiquitous.

About the Author:
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