"What I would care to know is if this chip would allow for a faster transfer of images on hand-held devices."

It looks as though it's the resolution of the CMOS sensor that Micron's touting... the higher resolution sensors have typically been the more expensive CCDs (Charge Couple Devices). The implication being that, due to the improvement in their CMOS sensors, Micron should be able to compete for image quality sensitive applications (such as the Canon Digital Rebel, which uses a CCD) based on price and price sensitive applications (such as a camera phone, which already use a CMOS sensor) based on image quality. Of course, the caveat is that pixels count isn't the sole factor in quality... (i.e. how noisy is the sensor ?).

I didn't note anything in the piece that would indicate that the rate of image transfer would be affected.

- MikeB

If I may, Canon already uses CMOS imaging chips, including the Rebel Digital and others (8 mega pixels). They were one of the first back in 2004 or so.

Bill: it should not make the transfer any faster. It is still a positive development though as CMOS is in general more common and cheaper.

For digital Canon fans:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos350d/

Professional photographers shooting events particularly need a way to transfer their images fast out of the cameras, and to catalog them at the same time. This can be done wirelessly today.

Anyway, this forum is not about technology.