The world’s first camera phone, the Kyocera VP-210, was launched in 1999. Here are the first camera models in history.
In recent years, smartphone camera technologies have evolved considerably. Especially the flagship phones of big brands have started to compete with some camera models in terms of camera.
There is no doubt that the launch of the first mobile phone was a major milestone in worldwide communication. However, another big leap in this field was made almost 23 years ago.
In May 1999, Japan introduced the Kyocera VP-210, which was the first phone with a built-in camera that was commercially sold to the general public.
20 photos could be taken
When the Kyocera VP-210 was first released, its camera had a resolution of 0.11 megapixels, and 20 photos could be taken before the phone’s storage space ran out.
The phone had a 0.11 MP camera and could take 20 photos before it ran out of internal storage. The phone, which was sold with its own integrated stand for users to take pictures of themselves, was priced at around $325 in Japan.
It took another year for another cell phone with a camera to go on sale. In June 2000, Samsung launched the SCH-V200 phone in its home country of South Korea.
Capable of taking up to 20 photos at 0.35 MP resolution, the phone could display the photos it took on its 1.5-inch TFT LCD screen. However, since the camera in the phone is not hardware dependent, using a cable was necessary to transfer the photos to the computer.
Görsel: Samsung SCH-V200
In November 2000, the third camera phone went on sale in Japan: the Sharp J-SH04. Unlike Samsung’s phone, Sharp integrated the phone’s hardware and camera with each other.
This integration allowed phone owners to email 0.11MP images captured with its camera directly from the device.
America’s first camera phone
It took a while for the camera phone trend to reach the United States. In November 2002, two years after the Samsung SCH-V200 was launched in South Korea, the Sanyo SCP-5300 (also known as Sanyo Katana) went on sale in the US.
The camera of the phone, which was sold for about $ 400, had a resolution of 0.3 megapixels.
View: Sanyo SCP-5300
On the other hand, the idea of combining a camera with a mobile phone did not first come from Kyocera. In fact, there seems to be some confusion as to which device was actually the first camera phone.
Prior to the launch of the Kyocera VP-210, there were plenty of designs made for cell phones with some kind of camera on them.
In 1993, Daniel A. Henderson created two prototypes of a “wireless picture phone technology” device called Intellect.
This prototype was a portable product designed to receive and display images and video wirelessly from the message centre. The prototype in question is currently on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
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