The History of the Camera Phone

The History of the Camera Phone

The first camera phone was built by Samsung and first released in South Korea in June of 2000. This phone looked like a flip phone. When opened, it had a 1.5-inch TFT-LCD. The camera had the ability to take twenty photos at a 350,000-pixel resolution. In order to see the pictures you took on your phone, you must hook up your phone to the computer to be able to access the photos. The camera and the phone were pretty much two separate entities, housed in the same place. The name of this new technology was SCH-V200. After the SCH-V200, came the J-Phone. Many people speculate that the J-Phone was released earlier that year in November. That camera was rumored to be produced by the company Sharp in Japan. The J-SH04 or J-Phone had the capacity to take pictures at a 110,000-pixel resolution and also had the ability to electronically send the picture it took. The first camera phone in the U.S. was made in November of 2002. The chunky phone took pictures at 640x480 pixels. The SCP-5300 designed by Sanyo included a flash, white balance, timer, zoom, and filters. After 2003, camera phone popularity grew tremendously in the United States and many other companies wanted to try and make their own version of camera phones. The LG Renoir was the first camera phone with a built-in touch screen. This was followed by the creation of smartphones. The iPhone released and phone companies saw the desire for better-looking phones that were smaller and could still have a powerful camera. Now companies that produce smartphones are all in competition trying to produce the best camera phone with the least bulky body and best picture quality while still being visually appealing. These companies have been tasked with coming up with the next best technology every year. Each company takes its old design and tries to build on it and improve something to make it marketable to consumers. This has led to phones with multiple camera lenses to try and create different effects with each lense. The iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max have a normal telephoto camera, a wide lens, and an ultra-wide lens for those who have the desire for their pictures to be DSLR quality. I can only imagine what the future of the camera phone looks like. In just twenty years the phone has already changed so drastically so who knows what phones will look like in twenty more years.