There's an interesting article over at Ars Technica about how boosting the number of megapixels in the iPhone's camera would lead to worse picture quality. The author explores the things that really matter: autofocus and lens quality. For the most part, I agree with his analysis, but Apple still could have improved the camera.

Last week I wrote a short piece titled "Five Reasons NOT To Buy The 3G iPhone." Thank you to the many, many people who agreed and/or disagreed with the article and, further, who took the time to e-mail me about the story. One of the reasons I listed was that Apple took no steps to improve the camera.

Many of you assumed I meant for Apple to boost the number of megapixels the iPhone's camera has. While that would have been a nice gesture, it is far from the only thing that would improve the quality of images taken with the iPhone.

On megapixels, Ars says:

If Apple were to use a higher resolution image sensor with the same lens, the pictures wouldn't be any sharper -- and 2MP sharpness in a 5MP camera is just not acceptable. The other option would be to reduce the size of the lens opening, but that way, the amount of light that reaches the sensor is reduced and the iPhone would have an even harder time taking decent photos under dim lighting. The other problem is that the more megapixels that are crammed in the same size sensor, the smaller those pixels get. Since individual pixels are gathering less light, many will be "underexposed" and produce a lot more noise. That's the last thing that the iPhone's camera needs.

He's absolutely right. Simply boosting the number of megapixels would result in images of poorer quality. If Apple really wanted to improve the camera, it would have done a few things: add autofocus, improve the lens quality, add a flash, and add better camera software.

The first three would definitely result in a phone with a higher price tag, and possibly even an altered size/shape. Autofocus camera chips tend to be a bit thicker than fixed-focus lenses. Depending on how Apple engineered the guts of the device, this could have resulted in a bulge, or other change in the shape of the iPhone. My guess is Apple didn't want to take that route.

Better software, on the other hand, is something Apple could easily have done, and without impacting the price of the iPhone too much. As it is, the iPhone has zero ability to configure or change the settings for the camera. All you can do is point, and shoot. Sure, this ease-of-use factor is classic Apple thinking at work, but many (myself included) like to be able to make adjustments such as dial down the resolution, have some control over image size, crop the image, check for the right white balance setting, and so on. Apple must be assuming that iPhone users will use iPhoto (other other photo-editing software) to make those adjustments after the fact. The truth is, sometimes it would be nice to perform those actions on the phone, because you're going to send the photo to someone else directly from the phone.

As I mentioned in my article last week, I am hoping a third-party developer steps up to the plate and delivers software to do just this.