Ben Sillis asks for Electricpig, “So, remember back when the iPad first launched, and everyone had a good old a moan about the the lack of a camera?”
“Yeah, here’s Flickr‘s current daily average user stats for Apple’s devices with cameras,” Sillis reports. “Just 22 Flickr users out of more than 40 million use their iPad 2‘s camera to upload snaps, making it 200 times less popular than the iPhone 4.”
Sillis reports, “Of course, comparing between iOS devices is hardly fair: it’s not as though Apple has sold as many iPad 2s as it has iPhone 3Gs. But taken on its own that number, 22, is still stunningly low for a device that’s already shipped in the millions, and the total number of images on Flickr taken with the tablet is a paltry 12,570. Number of iPhone images? 51,331,761.”
More in the full article, including a high-res infographic, here.
MacDailyNews Take: With our iPad 2, we only use the rear camera only for the most down-and-dirty snapshots – almost always for use in quickly communicating “hey, look at this” imagery – not to create a photo that we’d ever share as “photography.” As Day One iPad owners for both models, half the time we still have to remind ourselves, “oh yeah, this thing has a camera now” (however rudimentary it may be) and not go reaching for our iPhone 4s. Anything we’d consider “photography” would come from at least our iPhone 4 or a real camera.
The iPad 2’s rear camera feels like a bit of spec sheet fodder from Apple. “We’d better have a camera on the back, too, not just on the front for FaceTime, so we can say we have a rear camera and easily and cheaply a bullet point from competitors sales sheets. We know nobody will use it much, but people think they need one, so just give it to them this time. We do enough tech reeducation projects already.”
So, if all that’s at hand is the iPad 2, we snap away (when we remember it’s there), but if we have something better (and we almost always do, since we have our iPhone 4s at the ready, at least), then we use the best camera we have within reach. iPad 2’s 0.7 megapixel rear-facing still camera reminds us of the original iPhone’s camera: Pixellation and poorly-lit artifacts galore; far better for video (it shoots HD) than for stills, for sure.
iPad 2 owners: Do you use your iPad 2’s rear-facing camera? If so, for what type of use(s)?
