Can you imagine life with out your portable camera?

The First Camera Phone and how it has adapated...

Left: J-SH04, first phone with front camera.  
Right: Apples' latest release of their newest iPhone with several camera both front and back.

Personally, I use my iPhone everyday. With that, comes two back cameras and a front camera for selfies and video calling - with 64GB of storage and a camera with 12 Megapixels. We use our phones to send, receive and post photos every single day. Having a phone with a built-in camera makes it so much easier then it used to be with hard copy photos that could take weeks to send and receive. I can not imagine articles, tutorials or textbooks etc. without photos. Imagine trying to learn how to Fishtail braid your hair without any photos to guide you through that task? Nope.

The J-SH04 was a mobile phone made by Sharp Corporation released the J-Phone. It was only available in Japan and was released in November of 2000. It was Japan's first phone with a built-in, back-facing camera. The J-SH04 has been asserted to be the world's first camera phone... but technically you could not send or receive it.  So is it considered the first camera phone? Popularized by the concept of a camera phone, it had many predecessors. There are many disagreements on what is to be considered the "first camera phone".

In May of 1999 in Japan, Kyocera released the Video Phone - 210. This was the first phone with a front facing camera for video and selfies where  you could send electronically. So, does that consider THIS as the first camera phone because you can actually do things with the photos? That's for you to decide! Phillipe Kahn improvised this creation into existence upon the birth date of his daughter Sophie, "using a Casio QV-10 digital camera with an LCD display, along with a Motorola StarTAC flip phone and a laptop." He created a hardware to connect the phone and laptop. 

Below is the first ever made cell phone camera image that Kahn was able to share with his family and friends immediately after it was taken.

Camera phone trend hit the U.S. in November 2002 over two years after the first phone with a camera came out and other models. "In 2003, The New York Times reported sales of camera phones were already higher than standalone digital cameras. In 2006, camera phones surpassed sales of both digital and film cameras."

Since the first camera phone, it is pretty hard for me to imagine not having a camera built into my phone on me 24/7. I am constantly snapping photos of my family vacations, funny moments with my friends or even a good selfie of myself to upload as my Facebook profile photo. Life would be so different if we could not share our photos within seconds. Since 1999, we've come along way and technology has adapted to tend to our needs and desires with the photos we take - even allowing us to edit with filters like zoom or portrait mode!