It’s not a camera by itself, but with the rapidly improving technology in camera phones, you just may not need a standalone unit for your point-and-shoot needs pretty soon. OmniVision has developed “a 5.17 megapixel auto-focus camera module for mobile handsets based around the OV5623 CameraChip sensor.” And I thought the 3.2 megapixel cam on my phone was already pretty impressive.

That’s not to say that phones boasting this high-resolution picture-taker will be severely overpriced either, at least not necessarily. After all, OmniVision is marketing this 5 megapixel camera module as “an affordable, quality-driven solution.” Gone are the days of just an integrated VGA cam, folks.

Jess Lee of OmniVision is telling us that “the module is already in mass production and in development with customers, and we expect to be shipping soon.” Although catered to the cameraphone market, this new module can also be used in other applications as well.