By Matthew Henry

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA: Samsung has again raised the bar in the mobile camera phone space by launching the world’s first 10 megapixel camera phone in its domestic Korean market.

Capable of capturing poster-size images, the SCH-B600 will retail for $US900 in Korea, but is unlikely to be released in Australia at this stage.

The launch follows similar world-firsts from Samsung in the category during recent years, including the world’s first mobile phone with an embedded camera in 2000, the first 5.0 megapixel camera phone in October 2004 and the first 7.0 megapixel model in July 2005.

Other features include 3x optical zoom, LED autofocus, manual focus, Bluetooth image transfer, and mobile TV capability through the Korean satellite standard.

Despite a jump in resolution and the inclusion of a 3x optical zoom lens, Samsung has managed to make the B600 10 grams lighter and 6mm thinner than its 7-megapixel predecessor.

Most camera phones available in Australia today achieve between 0.8 and 3.0 megapixel resolution images, which are in many cases suitable for making small photo prints.

Although the B600 produces staggeringly high resolution images comparable in size to high performance digital still cameras, questions remain as to the quality of the optics and ability of a camera to deal with digital image noise, which is exacerbated in small CCD sensors with high megapixel counts.

High quality digital SLR cameras of similar megapixel resolution tend to use large full-frame digital sensors, which minimise image noise, particularly in darkly-lit images taken at high ISO settings.