A camera phone refers to a mobile device[1] that combines the functionalities of a camera and a phone. These devices typically feature CMOS active-pixel image sensors, with some models using back-illuminated sensors. Due to their compact size, they often have fixed-focus lenses and smaller sensors, which can limit performance in poor lighting. However, many have a digital zoom feature, with some models offering optical zoom. The location of the rear camera module varies, and can be found in the top center or upper left corner of the device. Camera phones also have multimedia capabilities, allowing for the recording of stereo audio video and the sharing of pictures instantly via carrier networks. Despite their limitations due to their small form factors, they have revolutionized photography and communication since their inception in 2001 by the Sharp Corporation.
A camera phone is a mobile phone which is able to capture photographs and often record video using one or more built-in digital cameras. It can also send the resulting image wirelessly and conveniently. The first commercial phone with color camera was the Kyocera Visual Phone VP-210, released in Japan in May 1999.
Most camera phones are smaller and simpler than the separate digital cameras. In the smartphone era, the steady sales increase of camera phones caused point-and-shoot camera sales to peak about 2010 and decline thereafter. The concurrent improvement of smartphone camera technology, and its other multifunctional benefits, have led to it gradually replacing compact point-and-shoot cameras.
Most modern smartphones only have a menu choice to start a camera application program and an on-screen button to activate the shutter. Some also have a separate camera button, for quickness and convenience. A few such as the 2009 Samsung i8000 Omnia II have a two-level shutter button as in dedicated digital cameras. Some camera phones are designed to resemble separate low-end digital compact cameras in appearance and to some degree in features and picture quality, and are branded as both mobile phones and cameras—an example being the 2013 Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom.
The principal advantages of camera phones are cost and compactness; indeed for a user who carries a mobile phone anyway, the addition is negligible. Smartphones that are camera phones may run mobile applications to add capabilities such as geotagging and image stitching. Also, modern smartphones can use their touch screens to direct their camera to focus on a particular object in the field of view, giving even an inexperienced user a degree of focus control exceeded only by seasoned photographers using manual focus. However, the touch screen, being a general purpose control, lacks the agility of a separate camera's dedicated buttons and dial(s).
Starting in the mid-2010s, some advanced camera phones feature optical image stabilisation (OIS), larger sensors, bright lenses, 4K video and even optical zoom, for which a few use a physical zoom lens. Multiple lenses and multi-shot night modes are also familiar. Since the late 2010s, high-end smartphones typically have multiple lenses with different functions, to make more use of a device's limited physical space. Common lens functions include an ultrawide sensor, a telephoto sensor, a macro sensor, and a depth sensor. Some phone cameras have a label that indicates the lens manufacturer, megapixel count, or features such as autofocus or zoom ability for emphasis, including the Samsung Omnia II (2009) and Galaxy S II (2011) and S20 (2020), Sony Xperia Z1 (2013) and some successors, Nokia Lumia 1020 (2013).
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