The long ignored child of the cellphone era, the front facing camera, has finally received a major boost thanks to the geniuses at Omnivision.
Front facing cameras have always been one of those features that everyone wanted, but never really put to extensive use, due to the fact that it was always an underperformer. In fact up until now, all the focus has been on developing the rear camera as the primary imaging device, the front facing camera just became “that something every phone must have on its spec sheet.” However, Omnivision is set to change all that with two new sensors for front facing cameras that would be capable of delivering true 1080p video quality at 60 fps.
The new sensors developed by Omnivision are said to pack 1080p capabilities into a 5mmx5mmx3.5mm area. One reason front facing cameras have faced development nightmares is simply due to the space constraint they have to put up with, which is precisely what Omnivision seems to have circumvented. The Omnivision OV2724, as the chip is called at the moment, does full HD video, but also boasts of way better dynamic range than any existing chip.
Now, we’d get pretty excited too, knowing that our phones could soon be making Skype calls in full HD with butter smooth video thanks to 60 fps frame-rates, however, the chip isn’t supposed to hit the fabrication lines until summer of 2013.
So, of course the next iPhone wouldn’t ship with this chip (but who knows, Apple may have already aced this bit), but the company plans on having phones ship with the new sensor in them by the end of the year. So, if Samsung or HTC or Nokia were to release a flagship phone by the end of the year, chances are that the Omnivision OV2724 chip might be making an appearance and that is something to look forward to.
Source: RedmondPie
