Yep, I reckon quite possibly, if this current trends are anything to go by…….
So we are now at the stage where we have:
• 8-10MP still image camera modules and devices coming on to the market
• Camcording functions that will do VGA resolution, and/or up to 120fps
The move to 1280×720 (which would give 720p HD theoretically) therefore cannot be that far away, and it’s not beyond the bound of reality to think we could even get up in to 1080 line territory (the so-called Full HD).
Of course, to enable this, you have to have some fairly potent graphics chips on-board the device – to the point where they are even dedicated chips for processing the “massive” HD frames (HD resolution is 4-5x larger than an SD frame).
But I think that the likes of Samsung and LG, and perhaps Nokia too, who are racing to deliver the “mostest” and “bestest” device for imaging & video, may well have hardware up their sleeves this year that could mean the first HD recording mobile device.
Now, HD by specification does NOT mean HD by quality. As the Still imaging arena has shown, most still cameras still produce a substantially better image than a mobile device, and those devices claiming high MP counts definitely cannot say their picture will be best because of it – I still the k800i 3.2MP images were leagues above the 5MP camera contenders that followed it, in terms of quality.
But what’s the betting that before the end of the year we’ll see something claiming to be HD-capable for video recording? HTC has already named one of their devices the “HD”, but that was referring more to the screen resolution – what we all want to see now is something that records good enough video that we can plug it directly in to an HD TV and watch it at a decent level of quality…