I’ve been saying this for a LONG time but in order for mobile phones to replace digital cameras as the average consumers go-to-device for picture taking, they’ll have to add optical zoom. People are obsessed with megapixels but in reality, anything over 10MP should to do the trick just fine. As for flash? It is a necessity. But it seems like the zoom is radically ignored.

Pretty much all mobile phones today use digital zoom which means they are artificially “resizing” the image when they zoom which dillutes the picture quality and clarity. On the other hand, optical zoom allows you to zoom without negatively altering the image quality in any way/shape/form. So imagine that you have your typically awesome 12 megapixel camera phone but that you can zoom in 3 times closer and still have perfect quality – this is exactly what the Samsung Pixon 12 offers! If this is multiplied by digital zoom found on the camera, you have a TON of flexibility in picture taking regardless of the occasion.

I’m absolutely excited about the new Pixon12 and can’t wait until more mobile phones have optical zoom. Obviously the concept of a lens moving in and out of the hardware presents some engineering and design challenges, but as technology improves, more should be possible in a smaller space. Other details about the Pixon12 are unknown but I’m pretty eager to see what else we’ll get in the package.

To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have to sacrifice for the Optical update but I would be more than willing to make concessions. By the way, the “new” version with optical zoom is the SCH-W880. The phone is rumored to launch on South Korean carrier SK Telecom (SKT)

[Via Samsung Hub]