When purchasing a cell phone, the most likely question you will be asked is: “What do you need it for?” This question would have been too weird a couple of decades ago, but it’s not any more. Among the functions we enjoy and take for granted with our cell phones are: ability to take photos, review documents, download applications, watch movies, let alone calling someone!
Let’s take a closer look at phone photography and try to understand how cell phones have become so “smart”.
Sharp and Samsung are known to everyone. In 2000 at approximately the same time they both introduced phone models able to take photos. The photo quality was rather poor: from 0,11 up to 0,3 megapixels, but it was a big step towards phone photography development.
Interesting, but even prior to that Mitsubishi (now known as automobile manufacturer) offered a prototype to modern smart phones. In 1985 there was developed a Lumaphone. Although it was called a video phone, every 3-5 seconds it produced still images. When connected to a TV or a monitor, it helped conducting video conferences.
Phone photography kept developing further with the photo quality improving tremendously. Gradually the quality of the photos became higher; there were developed special applications for posting photos on the Internet. One of the advantages of taking photos with a phone is the ability to immediately send them to social networks and get all of these “likes” within a few minutes.
Some cell phones even offer professional photography features. There are phone models equipped with cameras able to shoot in RAW format. Latest iPhone allows taking pictures in JPG, TIFF, and GIF. Those users who don’t claim to be professional photographers may prefer to stay with a high quality smart phone instead of paying money for both a smart phone and a camera.
But can a cell phone camera completely replace professional photographic features? So far it’s unlikely since a regular camera allows experimenting with light, exposure, and offers many more options with file formats depending on individual needs of its users. So, we may start talking about “professional cell phone photographers”, but not right now.
In addition to photography smart phones allow working with documents. So, upon receiving a file with an attachment it’s not necessary to run to the nearest desktop computer. Make use of built-in applications for documents. So, a smart phone has become something really irreplaceable. Losing one may turn to be a real nightmare!
fCoder offers several software applications for working with images and documents. 2JPEG will help convert images to JPEG format; Image Converter Plus will help with processing images of different file formats and converting them; 2Printer will make sure you don’t waste your time and will print your documents and images all at ones; DocuFreezer will save valuable information for years ahead.