Improving Flashes in Camera Phones

CAP-XX has published the results of a study they funded, comparing flash solutions - xenon, standard LEDs and high-current LEDs powered by a supercapacitor, or CAP-XX's LED BriteFlash - for their ability to provide the Light Energy that camera phones of 2-megapixels or more need to take digital-still-camera-quality pictures in low light. Tests showed that the Light Energy from CAP-XX's LED BriteFlash exceeds most Xenon flashes.

"Camera phones are improving with more megapixels and better lenses, image-processing software and anti-handshake features," explained Pierre Mars, CAP-XX vice president of applications engineering. "The area that lags behind is the power and energy of the flash for taking pictures in low light."

The key to clear pictures is Light Energy - the total amount of light that fills a camera's pixels during image-capture time. On the other hand, Light Power refers to the intensity of a flash. Light power, along with flash exposure time is used to calculate Light Energy: light power (lux) x flash exposure time (secs) = Light Energy (lux.secs). Ten to fifteen lux.secs of Light Energy is ideal for high-resolution pictures.

"We have seen images taken with well-known camera-phone models both with and without CAP-XX's supercapacitor-enabled LED flash and the differences are dramatic," said Tony Henning, Mobile Imaging Analyst, 6SightTM Future of Imaging. "Subjects up to 10 feet from the camera are well-illuminated with the CAP-XX solution and all but pitch black without."

CAP-XX CEO Anthony Kongats said, "We are working with key mobile-phone manufacturers and expect the first designs that are power-boosted by our supercapacitors to hit the market late 2007 or 2008."

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Posted to the site on 25th October 2006