43% of people use their phone as their main camera

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Cameras, Smartphones

Last week Flickr announced that the iPhone 4 leapfrogged the Nikon D90 to become the most popular camera used by members of the photo hosting site. So we asked readers: is your cell phone your primary camera?

566 people weighed in to answer the question, and the results were pretty close. A quarter (142 people) said their phone's camera is their primary camera because they don't see the need to carry around an additional device. 24 percent of respondents (136 people) said their phone isn't their primary camera because they like using a regular camera. About a fifth (117 people) said they use both a standalone camera and a camera phone. The good quality of their phone's camera is the reason 18 percent of readers (100 people) reported that their phone is their primary camera while a lousy camera is the reason 13 percent (71 people) said they don't use their phone as their primary camera.

It appears that nearly half (43 percent) of our readers mainly use their phone's camera to snap photos. The results are not that surprising, considering that according to Flickr's data, the iPhone 4 is more popular than both point and shoot and SLR cameras on the site. Flickr isn't always able to detect which device a member is using to add a photo; it says it gets it right about two-thirds of the time.

Regardless, it seems that camera phones could be eclipsing standalone cameras, and there are a number of reasons for this. At the very least, most phones allow you to connect to the Internet, which means people can now generally upload their images directly to the Web, without having to first add them to their hard drive. Additionally, the quality of cameras on phones is ever-improving. The iPhone 4 has a 5-megapixel camera, and it's rumored that the iPhone 5 will have an 8-megapixel camera, quality that is at least comparable, if not better than most point and shoot digital cameras.

So are you ditching your camera? If you are, our poll shows that you're in good company. Give us your feedback in the comments section.

This article, written by Leslie Horn, originally appeared on PCMag.com and is republished on Gear Live with the permission of Ziff Davis, Inc.