Despite having only a 2 megapixel camera, the iPhone continues to be the most popular cameraphone used on Flickr. Yeah yeah, we all know that the iPhone camera doesn’t have the ability to zoom or autofocus, and that other cameraphones might shoot in higher quality, but that hasn’t stopped iPhone users from snapping away to their hearts content.

October 2008



As you can see, the Nokia N95, with its 5 megapixel camera, seems to be stagnating as the iPhone continues its climb. But things were more closely matched even as recently as this past August.

August 2008

And here were the most popular camera phones on Flickr in May of 2008.

Keep in mind that this data doesn’t indicate that the iPhone is the best or even necessarily the most used cameraphone out on the market. It could very well be that a disproportionate number of Flickr users happen to use iPhones. Another factor behind the data could be the ease with which iPhone users can automatically send their photos to Flickr.

Critics like to harp on the fact that the iPhone camera isn’t up to par with other cameraphones on the market, but they don’t realize that when it comes to taking important quality photos, the majority of consumers would never dream of using a cameraphone in the first place. Cameraphones are mostly used for quick snapshots where ease of use and convenience are more important than the ability to zoom in, for example. People who are serious about capturing events in high photo quality use dedicated cameras. But for everyone else who just wants to take quick pictures of people on the street, protest marches, and shots of New York City at night, the iPhone seems to work just fine.

About these graphs (Via Flickr):



These graphs show the number of Flickr members who have uploaded at least one photo or video with a particular camera on a given day over the last year.

The graphs are “normalized”, which is a fancy way of saying that they automatically correct for the fact that more people join Flickr each day: the graph moving up or down indicates a change in the camera’s popularity relative to all other cameras used by Flickr members.