Why Not Turn A Camera Into A Phone?

This is one of the most beautiful and innovative concepts you’ll have seen in a long time, and acts upon something I’ve always wondered about – why can’t manufacturers just add mobile phone guts to a camera?

Dreamt up by the Seattle-based design firm Artefact, the Camera Futura concept sees a slim body paired with interchangeable lenses, with a novel twist on the camera form we know and love – the lenses actually hold the sensors and camera components, which means it can be used wirelessly from the camera body.

Artefact has dubbed this technology WVIL (for Wireless Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens), and claims the camera body could be held on a tripod or by someone else, with the lens a distance away, being used by someone else. Manual controls such as the focus and zoom could be kept to the lens, with the touchscreen display on the camera body also having the same controllable features added.

While it’s only a concept and the sky’s the limit with made-up specs, Artefact would hope to see the usual forms of connectivity added to the cameraphone, for wirelessly sending photos to other devices. They can also see apps playing a huge part in the camera’s OS, helping to share photos to social networking accounts and edit them. Not to mention perform the usual smartphone functions we’ve come to expect from any phone worth its salt nowadays. [Artefact via ReadWriteWeb]