Monday, February 12, 2007

Siimpel Shows Its First Product

Eric Fossum of Siimpel published an announcement in dpreview forum:

"I am happy to announce that we have presented our first paper on the MEMS (Micro-electro-mechanical system) autofocus camera module for camera phones. It is for 1/3" format, nominally 2 or 3 megapixel sensors.

Among other things, handset manufacturers require that the camera in the handset survive dozens of drops directly onto concrete from waist or shoulder height. Try that with your DSC, esp. when there are moving parts inside. We are currently meeting shock levels exceeding 5000 Gs.

Also, the whole camera has to cost the camera manufacturer about $10-$15 to make, including sensor, lens AF actuator, housing, etc.

It also has to be fairly robust to manufacturing tolerances since millions per month need to be reliably manufactured. We are currently in pre-production of the MEMS component at the "low" rate of 10,000 units per day. We expect to see it in a tier 1 handset in Q4'07.

The linked paper has a lot of technical information in it. I am quite pleased with the 2Mpix imaging performance. While it is hardly a DSLR, we welcome your comments and thoughts.

At http://www.siimpel.com you can find me under "management" and the paper under "news".
"

The direct link to the paper is here.

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