The First Camera Phones

Throughout history, many different ways of communication have surfaced and been used all around the world. The telegram led to the telephone, the telephone led to the mobile phone, and then, in 1999, the first camera phone emerged. It was a test run camera phone developed by Samsung in Japan. This model, featuring a 110,000 megapixel camera, did not see the light of day and never made it to public market. In 2002, this changed and the world saw the first  camera phones, the Sanyo SCP-5300. This phone boasted a .3 mega pixel, or 300,000 megapixel, camera within its build.

It was capable of taking a few photos at a 640 x 480 resolution. After this phone launched, the camera phone market took off and skyrocketed. By the next year, millions of people around the world had camera phones. This phenomenon helped kickstart the “smart” phone buzz. People were now wanting more and more compacted into their mobile phones and eventually, in 2008, the iPhone was released. This touch-screen smartphone, featuring a 2 megapixel camera, shot mobile phones into the future. From there, the camera phone slowly died off as it became replaced by a better invention. Regardless, the camera phone had a solid and strong run while it was popular on the market. Ultimately, it was a success with millions of sales, a drive for innovation, and it even served as inspiration for many phones to come after it.