It doesn't work that way.

As an example last year Canon announced a 15mp point and shoot. People found that the old 10mp version had the same sharpness, except the files were a lot smaller, it was faster, etc. So last week Canon announced a new version, but this time they went back to 10mp.

The extra megapixels don't actually add more sharpness, they just add more pixels to blurry pictures. If you have a sensor designed from the beginning with larger pixels then you can increase the sensitivity, which gives you sharper pictures. You can increase the sensitivity on a high megapixel camera as well, but because the individual pixels are so small, you will get noise. The camera will try to correct for noise by blurring the picture, so now you are back to where you started.

@drizek: that's a very sharp picture. was it taken with said Nikon D40?
but comparing a compact (minicule sensor and lens size) with a DSLR wouldn't be fair though...

I know what you're trying to say, but you're saying it in a misleading way. You just said that a D40 with 6 megapixels is better than a D3 that sports 12. Well it isn't. There are numerous parameters taken into account, like CCD size, the readout noise of individual pixels, etc.

The other thing you're somethat wrong about is color reproduction and sharpness. The higher resolution camera means the bayer RGB array is spread out through more pixels, so the 5Mpix cam *CAN* make FAR better (sharper and better colors) 1.3Mpix photo than a 1.3Mpix camera if it's implemented correctly. If it's crap, it's crap, but it's not the pixel COUNT that makes it crap (it's just a part of the equation).

No EXIF metadata found.

Picture from n900

http://web1.twitpic.com/img/26193470...8273a-full.jpg

This one
http://www.flickr.com/photos/asimula...86898/sizes/o/
isn't bad. I would say it is on par with N97 examples I saw.

I really wouldn't rely on sample photos from prototypes, we've seen quite a lot of prototype S60 models on All About Symbian where the photo compression algorithms changed completely between the prototype and production models.

Looks quality wise from old proto imho.

Have you got a link to the twitpic page which links to that image, as it looks like direct linking isn't working and I was looking for a higher-res version than your attachment.
"The photo you were looking for has been deleted."

Anyone else notice that since we have been referring to aSIULAtor's Flick Photo's all the ones we were thinking were from a N900 have been removed. I wonder is that was because we stirred something up and they shouldn't have been posted. Maybe those were real picks.