Wait or Buy?

[Jaynie]

I use my mobile everyday and I am taking more and more pictures with it and sending them to my mates and family. Some I think are alright pictures and I want to keep them properly, but the camera is not good enough to print them out or look at them on a computer screen at a decent size. I have a LG phone.
I am being told that if I want to take proper pictures I should get a digital camera. That makes sense.
But, aren't camera phones going to get better? Be the same as digital cameras? Isn't that what everybody is saying? I like my mobile and if I can get one thing to do everything that would be great.
But is it worth the wait? Also, I looked at some cameras and really liked the cannon ixus. Why can't they just make that a phone as well? Then I could send pictures and print them out at a decent quality.
So what should I do? Buy a digital camera or wait until a phone camera comes along, or do both ?

[autopilot]

I would say both. I have a K750i, which has really pushed the boundaries in terms on mobile phone photography quality. I use it all the time, but if i was going somewhere that i wanted some really good keep-forever pictures, would take my proper camera too.

The reason we have not got 4MP+ camera's in phones yet is largely down to the marketing tactics of the phone makers. It makes more sense to increment thier functionality year by year, thus keeping us upgrading. In Japan they have a 6MP and over cameras in a phone but the best we can get at the moment is 2MP. There are three other major limitations with phone camera's at the moment; Firstly is optics. No phones currently have proper camera len's, mainly for keeping the size down and the cost. However, Nokia are planning proper camera optics in the soon to be released 'N' series. Secondly, and most importantly in my opinion, is the lack of a real mechanical shutter. This dramatically reduces what you can acheive. Phones work sort of like a digital video camera that samples a 'frame'. The problem is that A) you need a very very steady hand. B) They can't cope with fast moving images. C) There is often a delay in actually capturing the image. D) You are limited creativly in many situations. The third issue is a lack of any real optical zoom. Digital zoom reduces the final quality lots and can be done on a PC anyway. Also i might add, is that if you want a take video clips, proper digital camera's take much much better clips than any phone currenly can. This is down to a lack of processing power and memory limitations.

That said, the new models (2mp+) do a very good job given thier technical limitations. You just have to learn to live with them and get used to thier quirks. The simple fact is that 99% of us don't want to carry a full on camera in thier pocket all the time. I don't have a seperate mp3 player because i hate carrying loads of things around, so i use my phone. But i always used to go out and wish i had my camera. Now I always have one in my pocket, and one that takes photos that are print out quality.

It will probably be two or more years before phones match the capabilities of proper current cameras, especially in term of colour depth. But they are getting fairly close to the low-mid end camera's. The low-mid end 'casual' snapper digital camera manufactures can already smell thier doom and are running scared. But for the next 2-3 years I will be using both (in fact i will probably always have a good SLR for my keep forever photo's of weddings etc).

Hope that helps, i had a spare hour at work to pass