Do you have a mobile smart phone? Chances are that you probably do have one, and you probably use it everyday as well to make calls, text friends and family members, and most of all, take pictures and video. It’s normal, and it’s what everyone does.

Almost everyone in the United States today and many people around the world in most of the first world countries own some sort of mobile smart phone. There are many amazing features on these devices, and one of them is the smart phone camera. Today, it has completely replaced the need to own a point and shoot camera of any kind.

The inception of the phone camera

Of course, even the first mobile phones did not have cameras on them. This came about in the 1990s. Flip phones were popular at this time, and during the 1990s and into the early 2000s, cameras started to be then added to these phones. The cameras were not very good at all, so most people who wanted to be able to take pictures as well had to use a point and shoot camera.

Point and shoot cameras

Cameras have been around for a long time now. They first started during the Civil War, long before things like Facebook, Slots at Red Flush, or texting via iMessage, and the first pictures taken with these cameras were black and white. A bulb had to explode every time a picture was taken, and all sorts of pictures were very expensive to buy.

Today, cameras are of course very different. As time has progressed, cameras have gotten smaller and smaller. The point and shoot cameras that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s were the most advanced of their kind at the time. You could get one of them for around $50 all the way up to several hundred dollars or even thousands of dollars. You did not have to calibrate the white balance. It did that on its own automatically on the camera.

Cameras on smart phones

Finally, the two technologies came together. Today, smart phones of all kinds have cameras already built into them. There is no longer any need to carry around a point and shoot camera. Most of the smartphone cameras that you can buy brand-new today are even better then the other old cameras.

Not only can you take a wonderful pictures of someone else or a scenery setting, but you can also take selfies of yourself. This means that there are actually two cameras on each smart phone. You can also take slow motion videos and time lapse videos with smart phones. In other words, the point and shoot camera is completely obsolete in this day and age.