Use your phone like a still-image camera? Sure, you can do that now. But get your pictures to look like still-image photos? That’s another thing entirely. Unless you are TransChip, who plans to demonstrate such functionality at the 3GSM World Congress next week.

Among the company’s reported offerings in Barcelona are solutions for auto-focus and optical zoom. Building on the recent release of the latest in a line of fully programmable CMOS camera modules (the TC7040), TransChip aims to show just how close it can get to digital still-image quality by, among other things, using:

• voice-coil technology,
  
• electro-wetting technology for up-close focus,
  
• Piezo electric technology using Johnson Electric’s NanoLens and a Helimorph actuator,
  
• and extended focus technology to keep everything in focus without moving an electronic muscle.
  

Also on the docket is a demonstration of a 3x zoom feature, in both wide and telephoto modes.

What does it all mean? Just as digital cameras are now approximating the high resolution formerly seen only in still cameras, mobile phone cameras are climbing the same ladder, targeting digital still image quality in the process. TransChip’s demonstrations should go a long way toward making that possibility a reality.