It seems camera phones are about to get a whole lot better, at least if Samsung has any say in the matter. What you see here is the company’s latest technological miracle: an 8 megapixel CMOS sensor designed exclusively for camera phones. As you can see, it’s pretty small – just 28mm x 15.3mm x 8.5mm – but most impressive is the functionality it provides. Not only does it come with 8 megapixels, it also offers ISO settings up to 1600, which means pics taken in low light conditions will look much better.

There also anti-shake technology built-in, face recognition, a 1cm macro, and Samsung’s very own “Smile shutter” system, which detects smiles, and automatically takes a photo when everyone is smiling! Not entirely sure why you’d want a photo album filled with grinning idiots, but at least it beats a set of gurning ghouls, which my Facebook photos seem to consist of!

The new Samsung CMOS will begin production in the third quarter of this year, so expect to see 8 megapixel camera phones based on this chip early in 2009.

[Source: TrustedReviews]