I truly don’t understand how in 2023 with all the digitalization we have cars with backup cameras from at best a 2015 mid range smartphone. What’s preventing a manufacturer like bmw for an example from putting a high end sony sensor like the one on the iPhone 15 into their camera modules?
Honestly I wonder the same. The backup camera in my 2008 Infiniti is still better/on par than any modern one I see today.
Do you need a 4k back-up camera? I just wanna see if I’m gonna hit something. I’d much rather have the money spent on smarter proximity sensors that only go nuts when they should go nuts, not when parking in my garage 3 feet from the wall.
My wife’s traverse has the best camera I’ve ever seen in a car. Crystal clear video
The cameras in my 2020 Telluride are very clear.
Because the need to work 24/7 365, and be cheap to replace when they quit working.
Most of what makes our phone cameras good are post processing. Not the lens and sensor itself
“At least as good as a 5 year old iPhone” should be a reasonable standard, I think.
The one in my Acura RDX is awful, and looks like it’s been transformed from one resolution to another before being shown to me using only part of the available screen real estate. It’s pathetic, and quite sad, given how competent the car is in general. I’ve driven and been in so many cars from Mazda, Lexus, Audi and others whose cameras look like you’d expect in 2023 -
Helped a friend with a car buying purchase this year. We got into a 2023 Civic for a test drive and the new 2023 Prius. I was astonished how poor the resolution was on them. Especially so for the Prius given it’s a newly launched model.
Something that is constantly leaked on, frozen, heated, and possibly smashed by some punks - I’d rather NOT cost $1400 if at all possible.
Good argument with the environment they’d be in. But a decent phone camera alone. Pixel 7 pro for example , is only about $150 for you and I to buy. Buying them in quantity would reduce that .
A pixel 7 sensor wouldn’t work well as a backup camera. Or any high pixel count phone sensor. Post processing does most of the work in those phones. Especially in low light.
Exactly! The pixel camera would need basically a Tensor SOC from a Pixel in order to run the post-processing.
Maybe in the next 5 years we’ll start getting cars with onboard computers with that power…
But for now, it’s just a backup camera. There are some good ones out there too. Remember that car models stay on sale for years and years - it’s not like phones where the oldest phone at the Apple store is maybe 2 years.
Also, people buy cars and keep them for a lot longer than phones. So, for example, maybe people are complaining about the camera in their 5-year-old car, a model which launched 5 years before that!
A lot of smart camera phones are very sensitive to vibration and won’t survive for very long bolted to a car.
You’ll kill an iPhone camera in just a few hours mounting it to a motorcycle. Cars are a little more civilized, but they’re not going to last the life of the car.
You’ll kill an iPhone camera in just a few hours mounting it to a motorcycle
wut? i had my iphone mounted to my motorcycle for countless hours with no issues.
Cars are a little more civilized, but they’re not going to last the life of the car.
my iphone sits in the cupholder of my truck every single time i drive, basically no less prone to vibration than being mounted on the back of the vehicle.
This hasn’t been the case for a long time. This is them being cheap, not doing it for reliability
It’s both. It’s very difficult producing electronics that hold up to the vibration and temperature extremes, especially cameras. They obviously try to make their product as cost effective as possible, but they still need to design and then validate every component to maintain their performance and durability requirements.
Tell that to the aliexpress 15$ backup cams that last forever with much better quality than OEM.
Manufacturers like saving money, that’s it. I was shocked by the 360 camera quality on a brand new mazda rental. You could barely make out anything in it.
Decent camera sensor + optics costs like $50 tops
Needs to be automative grade. Ask Tesla owners with failed screens why you ise automotive tested tech… Elon throught he could save a few bucks getting laptop grade screens
“automotive grade” You do realize there are cameras I’ve gone through direct winters and summer cycles under minimal cover.
You mean all those ones failing when people use them on bikes and motorcycles? Lol
I have a 108megapixel camera (along with 2 others) on my 500€ phone. And the camera price is probably less than 10% of the price
A 108 megapixel phone sensor in a backup cam probably would not look very good especially in low light. Your phone does a ton of post processing and binning to make the image look good. All of this is assuming the processor in the car infotainment keep up with a 108 megapixel stream. Which it probably can’t.
A 108 megapixel phone sensor is not actually outputting anything close to a 108 megapixel stream (that would be 12000x9000 resolution, which is higher than 8K). It combines data from 9 different sensors to create 12 megapixel (4000 x 3000) images. One of it’s specialties is low light situations.
The real problem is that it’s not made to stand up to the use case of a car camera, and requires additional processing power to run which may not work with the zero-fault requirements of backup cameras (the reason the systems are almost always on separate inputs/wiring to the screen than the rest of the failure-prone infotainment).
brah…I need more pixels so I can see the divorcee’s ass when I’m backing out and she’s bending over to get the mail across the street.
Henry Ford would do it!
I wish the industry would apply this philosophy more often. Heard that a Jaguar windshield can cost $5,000 to replace, and saw a video where a single Ford truck taillight assembly replacement cost $5,400.
Isn’t that just the manufacturer overcharging for parts for the most part? Like there is no way a taillight assembly is 10% of the cost of a truck.
We know it’s not a real supply shortage if the parts were that much before covid.
Tail/headlights costing $1000+ is the norm now, even on stuff that isn’t “fancy”
We sit around wondering why car insurance is going through the roof. Well, a fender bender is $10,000 in damage on an economy car these days, and people won’t look up from their phones so accidents are more and more frequent.
And you have to pay that if 1 led burns out.
100%. If you ask me, we should have stopped at power windows lol
Yes, a headlight for a south american made Hilux is $1000 in south america
How do they sell cars so cheap if the total price of even a few individual items is more than the car?
A $100 webcam is 10 times better than any car’s backup camera
Well, there’s your solution then. I’d kill to see someone actually do this one.
Molded BUMPERS! The part of the car designed to take impacts. Used to stick out from the bodywork in order to protect it. Now, it’s molded into the bodywork, so if you get a dent on your “bumper”, it now costs a fortune to replace.
Camera is probably $30. IPhone has 5 cameras(faceId,front,3 in back) Outdoor security cameras(eg: wyze) have decent cameras with good low light performance and cost like $30.
Mine looks great
Your phone camera isn’t expected to last decades with constant weather changes between the freezing cold and blazing sun.
But it’s lasting just fine in those conditions ?
So far only reason for me to get newer phone was frankly “no new android for it/new android runs too slow/battery dead”, never actual failure.
But it’s lasting just fine in those conditions ?
You’ve left an iPhone 4 outside since 2013 and it’s still working fine?
Yup. This is the same reason why digital dashboards also seem so low quality. It’s pretty important for that dashboard to work 24/7 in every temperature, especially with half the features behind the touchscreen nowadays
My friends infotainment in his truck has been black screening on him so he can’t tell what temperature the climate control is set to anymore
It makes no difference. The car camera is just a shitty camera with waterproof case and some lens cover. Transistors and the rest of electronics are similar with similar operating temperature ranges. The difference is that people care to have a nice camera in the phone and don’t care to have nice camera in the car
Why would they ? It’s for backing up not making pictures for your instagram feed.
Okay here are the reasons.
- The camera is a of a different grade. Heat, cold, insane vibrations (ois cameras go bad pretty fast with vibrations, ask bikers, they know the pain), and more.
- You really don’t need a that high quality.
- Phone cameras are connected with high speed connections to the ram where they store the data, they need short connections for this to be reliable I believe. Same reason why laptop cameras are shitty compared to phones.
- The cost I guess. On a 50k car, sure 500-k$ isn’t much, but when times comes and they’re damaged, it’s still a hefty price to pay.
I bought a camera for my kenwood radio i installed in my car and its been really good and reliable, with good interface right on the radio unit and it even has parking recording and collision/accident detection so it puts the recording in an extra folder.
Cameras are good nowadays but the market is flooded with the cheap stuff. I actually ordered the camera and they said i will have to wait for a month because they dont make them anymore. Like, bruh, the radio is a year old. Wtf are you making and selling then?.
Also, you dont know they even make the camera until you look into the manual and see a part number of the camera. What the hell even is this bad advertising, kenwood?
Cameras are good nowadays but the market is flooded with the cheap stuff. I actually ordered the camera and they said i will have to wait for a month because they dont make them anymore. Like, bruh, the radio is a year old. Wtf are you making and selling then?.
They put a generic (either usb or coax) inteface, bought camera off camera vendor and didn’t wrote in the deal “you have to make it for at least X years”.
Frankly they do not care about supplying replacement parts past the warranty period.
They could code the new camera to be supported in firmware tho…
Also, you dont know they even make the camera until you look into the manual and see a part number of the camera. What the hell even is this bad advertising, kenwood?
They are not making the camera 99.99% of the time, if it is “their” part number it’s most likely still 3rd party but rebranded.
Same as in car industry, BMW is not making brake rotors or ECUs, they are buying them off 3rd party vendors.
My main complaint isn’t actually camera quality but more the tendency for car manufacturers to not use more of the screen so that you can see the rear view easier. How many times do you see cars with large screens but then only like 60% of the screen is used for the camera view. Also more cars should have a button you can use to get your rear view camera without shifting to reverse.