The camera phone is officially an adult. This month marks 18 years since the first commercially-available camera phone was launched. The Sharp J-SHO4 was first released in November 2000 and was the first mobile phone to include a camera.
A lot has changed in the world of camera phones over the past 18 years, particularly the number of us who use them.
We launched a survey to find out more about how many photos the UK takes on their mobiles, every week. 60% of The 2,000 people who responded took an average of 10 pictures on their phones each week. The UK currently has 54,713,000 smartphone users, which means that more than 328 million pics are snapped using mobiles on a weekly basis.
In fact, the majority of everyone under the age of 35 said they prefer to take photos with their mobile phones than with a stand-alone camera. Of the entire survey, 59% of respondents revealed they prefer a camera phone to an actual camera.
Despite most over-35s stating they still prefer an actual camera, the majority of every age range stated that they take more photos using a mobile. 66% of all respondents take more photos with their phone, while a mere 12.8% primarily use a stand-alone camera.
Ironically, people sharing pictures of their food is one of the most begrudged social media updates we face, but food actually accounted for less than any other subject matter. Only 3.2% of respondents said that the majority of their pictures were of their food.
Selfies also came very low down on the list, with just 6.5% of participants making themselves the primary focus of their photography. Pets accounted for 10%, but friends and family took first place, with 39.6% of us mostly using our mobiles to take pictures of our loved ones.
Our survey also showed that we value our privacy more than many publications would have us think. While 31% of people send their images via private messaging services, only 18.3% of us share them on social media, with 30% of us not sharing any of our images at all.
The evolution of the camera phone
The idea for the camera phone was first patented on the 24th April 1995, but it still took another five years for the first device to finally hit the shelves. Since then, camera phones have been through many technological advancements to become one of the most-bought electronic devices of the 21st century. Here are some of the most crucial developments over the past 18 years:
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