Cameraphones - Lenses
Skip contentThe lens in a cameraphone is usually of limited quality, being of small size and with fixed focus and aperture, although this is still capable of giving in-focus pictures at a distance of between a few feet and infinity. You only have to look at the larger and more complex lens on a standard digital camera to see that a high quality lens is not a design priority on the average cameraphone.
The place where the lens is located on the phone may also be important in deciding how easy it is to use the camera. For example, many of the candy bar designed cameraphones have their lens fitted into the back cover, so that the phone’s display can be easily used as a viewfinder. On clamshell phones the lens may also be fitted into the back cover, and a number of these are designed to be operated with the phone in the closed position. However, several clamshells have the lens fitted into the hinge, and some lenses in both candy bar and clamshell phones are mounted into a moveable assembly, which is designed to be rotated by hand to change the direction in which the lens points.
Therefore, the location and quality of the lens could determine what the user can do with the camera, and it is wise to check these issues and whether they make photography difficult. The potential buyer should also be aware that the lenses on some cameraphones may suffer from a problem know as “barrel” distortion, where lines at the edges of the picture seem to be bowed like a barrel - hence the name. It is worthwhile checking the appearance of pictures taken with the phone before buying a particular model, if it is important that the camera performance must meet the user’s quality requirements.
