The first camera phones had 0.3 megapixel shooters. Shocking, I know, and as the years have passed we’ve seen higher and higher resolution cameras. The Nokia 808 PureView is the champion with 41 megapixels, which is just bonkers, but everyone will tell you that more doesn’t always mean better. The Finnish handset maker realized this with the Lumia 920, probably the first smartphone with optical image stabilization, a feature normally seen on dedicated point and shoots. Then HTC jumped on the OIS bandwagon with the One. The obvious question now is when will others follow?
According to the Korean publication ETNews, Samsung’s first smartphone with OIS will be the Galaxy Note III. They say it’ll be a 13 megapixel sensor, and that they key selling point will be the ability to snap photos and then edit them with the stylus. They also say that Samsung was thinking about giving the Note III’s camera a 3x optical zoom, but it would have negatively impacted the device’s thickness, so they scrapped the idea.
As Steve Litchfield said in an earlier editorial on Android Beat, pretty much every flagship phone in 2014 will have OIS. That’s just how this industry works. You should be excited if you’re one of those people who constantly takes pictures.
When will we see the Note III? All signs point to IFA, which kicks off on September 6th.
[Via: Android Authority]Update: The Korea Times has both an English site and a Korean site. This Samsung story has now been made available on the English site and there’s a choice quote in there from a Samsung employee:
“We are pondering various technologies at this stage – for example, OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) and shutter functions. But, nothing has yet to be confirmed, so we cannot conclusively say that those functions will be added to the Galaxy Note 3.”
In other words, don’t be upset if the Note III doesn’t have OIS.