SMARTPHONE TRANSMOGRIFICATION

Smartphones have changed the world as we know it

- Gabriel Pe

In just a decade, the smartphone has completely changed how we connect and interact with one another. With 5G and the upcoming 6G, smartphones will drive even faster connectivity and communication. The phone has become increasingly essential to financial transactions with the increasing adoption of e-wallets and online banking. Throughout the course of the smartphone's continuous evolution, nothing has been as constant as the gradual improvement of performance and camera output.

How the smartphone got eyes

If we want to know the origins of the modern camera phone, we must go back two decades to when the first camera phones were introduced.

Phone cameras didn’t start as lenses; it was a technology to display and transmit images from another source (like a computer) to your phone. The first instance of this technology was the “Intellect” phone, a prototype made by Daniel A. Henderson in 1993. It had a monochrome screen (the “black and white” screens) that could display image and video files wirelessly transmitted from a computer. Most of the tech used in those prototype units is still the backbone of the tech used today. In 1995, Apple made its own prototype in the form of the Apple videophone that could still only receive images.

It wasn’t until 1997 that an actual camera phone was devised when Philippe Kahn jerry-rigged his phone, a digital camera, and a laptop. Kahn wanted to capture and quickly share a photo of his newborn daughter. The contraption was able to send the digital photo by using the laptop to communicate between the phone and the camera.