I remember the first phone i ever had with a camera on it; an LG VX 8300 flip phone. The ability to take awful photos with my phone gave me the power that at any place or anytime, I could capture a photo of myself, my friends or my surroundings and send it instantly to my friends. It was pretty cool.
The first cellphone cameras were revolutionary. For the first time people could carry one device with them that gave them the power to instantly become a news reporter, photographer or film maker. And that's exactly what people have done. Today, over three hours of video are uploaded per minute to YouTube from mobile devices. There are 250 Million photos uploaded to Facebook daily, with nearly 100 million of these images were taking with mobile phones. Add in images uploaded to Twitter, Instagram and other photo sites and the numbers are surely astonishing.
Phones today are a little different then they were when I first purchased my VX 8300. By a little, I mean a lot. Better screens, better processors, better cameras and more disk space create a better environment for creating rich media. In the app-centric world that we live in, this media is being used in ways that would have made my VX 8300 explode. Mobile apps like Instagram allow you to create visually stunning images that are easily shareable with friends. iMovie for the iPhone will allow you to edit full length films that could only be done in the past with computers with a lot of processing power. Apps like Facetime and Skype will allow you to have a face to face conversation with your friends.
While these applications are great we're starting to see apps that use your camera in a different way. As a navigator, a scanner, or even translator.
Augmented reality is something that developers are just breaking the ice on. Augmented reality uses your camera in combination with your GPS to navigate your surrounding in better detail. Picture yourself walking or driving down the street. With augmented-reality displays, which will eventually look much like a normal pair of glasses, informative graphics will appear in your field of view, and audio will coincide with whatever you see. These enhancements will be refreshed continually to reflect the movements of your head. All this is thanks to the camera (with a little help from a GPS) Say "thank you smartphone cameras".
Barcode scanners have been around for a long time. You know, those red lasers at the grocery store that scan your Cheerios box. Well smartphones can do the same thing thanks to the sophisticated cameras that are now in smartphones. Applications can be created to scan just about any type of barcode, QR code or intelligent code. As a matter of fact, AndPlus has created a few applications using barcode scanners. One in particular app called SecondSeats allows users to scan their tickets while they are in an event and upgrade them to a better open seat for a small upgrade fee.
Applications like Microsft's Bing Vision allows you to scan text in any language and then convert that text to any language of your choice. Applications like this use the camera and something called OCR (optical character recognition) software that recognizes characters and highlights them, then using a translator service like Google Translator to translate the text. Muy Bein!I'm sure this is just the tip of the ice berg as far as mobile applications utilizing smartphone cameras go. Only time will tell what the future will have in store for us, but I'm sure that the camera will play an integral part!