The Guardian has posted a reflection on the state of camera phones: Camera phones offer snapshot of an era, focused on the Sony Ericsson Satio, yet another 12 Megapixel camera phone.

Pixels alone don’t make a good camera, but the arrival of a 12MP device, with its claimed ability to be enlargeable to near poster size, is regarded as a landmark in the ongoing progress of the camera phone (even though 20MP phones may be here next year).

We cringe at how much worse a 20MP camera phone is going to be.  Stop the insanity!

Techradar has Reviewed the Sony Ericsson Satio and you can jump to the camera review which does have some low-light images, which I would consider to be “Piss Poor”.

It’s interesting to note that this is another sample image from a 12MP camera pointed at a bright light source in a dark scene.  This causes what low-light performance the camera might be capable of to be blown out by the auto-exposure which adapts to the bright subject at the center of the scene.

That being said, we would like to think that these signs are part of a city, not some giant black void.  Hard to tell with this camera!   Yes, it has lots of pixels.  The vast majority of them are black because they’re not large enough to capture what little light exists.

Related posts:

1. 12 Megapixel shoot out: Sony Ericsson Satio Vs. Samsung Pixon12
2. NTT DoCoMo / Fujitsu F-01B waterproof 12 Megapixel camera phone
3. Samsung’s Pixon 12 offers a controversially large number of pixles