iPad 2’s Cameras Are Abysmal

The most anticipated hardware change from the original iPad to the iPad 2 is the addition of a front facing and rear cameras. For those who were holding out for those, remove those from your list of selling features. Yes, they’ll be there, but the reports are that the cameras are in line with early flip phones. The front facing camera is a VGA camera. That’s a .3 megapixel camera. OK what about the camera on the back? It’s 720p (HD) so that should be promising, right? Well that typically means 1280 x 720 pixels but that’s just .92 megapixels. But worse, as Mashable points out, it may be the same cameras as the iPod Touch. That camera is noted as “HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio; still photos (960 x 720) with back camera.” That means that still photos are at an incredible .7 megapixels. I think they state it very well:

It seems impossible for Apple to put a decent camera into anything but the iPhone, and despite many hopes, both cameras in the iPad 2 are about as rudimentary as you could get without having to load a roll of film in there.

In fact, the iPad 2’s camera has more in common with the low-res camera in the iPod Touch than it does to the rather excellent one in the iPhone 4.

So maybe this is really just a stepping stone for the much rumored iPad 3 which is alleged to also come in 2011 with a retina display. In the end, video should be fine on the iPad 2, but still photos will be all flip phone style. Still standing in line for it?