Last week we reported on the RJ63YC100, Sharp’s new 12 megapixel camera module for smartphones and tablets that features optical image stabilization and is less than 5.5 mm thick. It hasn’t been put inside any American or European smartphones yet, though it has shown up in the Sharp AQUOS SH-01D that’ll sadly never leave the island nation of Japan. So just how well does the optical image stabilization work? The folks at The Verge just posted 3 videos produced by Sharp that demos a pair of SH-01D units strapped to an oscillating camera stand attempting to record a video; meanwhile Richard Lai from Engadget actually got his hands on a retail SH-01D and recorded 3 videos showing off the optical image stabilization in the real world. Watch all 6 videos and you’re guaranteed to come to the same conclusion as we did: Sharp has really done something magical here.
For camera buffs out there, the cream of the crop is still the Nokia N8, though we understand why you’d want to avoid it since it’s running an ancient, almost impossible to use operating system. The Samsung Galaxy S II is also impressive, but it comes in third place behind the iPhone 4S, which is not only amazing, but also has a wide range of image editing and sharing applications available in the App Store. Now those rankings can radically change, and likely will over the next 2 months as CES and MWC kick off in January and February respectively. We’re expecting to see the Samsung Galaxy S III, the Nokia Lumia 900, and who knows what HTC has up their sleeve. We hope that someone, likely Samsung, will make use of this Sharp camera module, and hey, you never know, it might show up in the next iPhone!
For the folks who take photo taking seriously, what smartphone do you use? And for those of you who could care less about taking pictures, if your camera was better would you actually take more photos?