[slantyyz]

>> I suspect it's going to produce extremely poor photos.

Relative to what? Compared to an SLR? Sony's RX100? The iPhone 4? Other 1/2.3" cameras?

Keep in mind that a 1/2.3" sensor is still significantly larger than something like, say the 1/3.2" sensor in the iPhone 4. Scaled to real-world image sizes (i.e. Facebook, etc.) the downsampled images will probably be good enough for most snapshots.

[watty]

What's the point of 16MP if you're only concerned about scaling to Facebook?

[jwn]

What's the point of 16MP anyway? I've been very happy with my Nikon D40 shooting at 6BP.

[slantyyz]

There really isn't much of a point to 16MP, but seeing how the camera comes with it, and how people will practically use it (i.e. downsample), there's really nothing you can do but accept that it's there.

[enraged_camel]

Exactly. Megapixels only really matter if you're doing photo-editing or photo-printing. If it's being down-scaled - and it is, if you are uploading it to whatever social media site - then a 5MP iPhone 4 camera will serve you just as well.

[spartango]

Well, except for the part where high density, low area sensors tend to have more noise and poorer sensitivity. If you were to assume that the iPhone and this device's sensors were the same size (they're probably not), then the iPhone's images would generally turn out better.

[slantyyz]

They also matter if you do a lot of "digital zoom". While I'm not a fan of digital zoom, people seem to use it.

[roc]

But if you're not ready to make the smartphone/data-plan plunge, or your smartphone has a crap camera...