Why can't phone cameras capture good pictures compared to digital cameras?

The size of the CCD (closed capture device) (the actual component that captures the image...it's what gives you the megapixels, and the quality and size of the lens. Just because you have a lot of something doesn't mean that it's good.

phone cameras are digital cameras!!!!!!! They just have a really low amount of mega-pixles, probably around 1.6 where as your digital camera has from 4-10 mega-pixles.

Phone cameras generally give lower quality images, due to the limited amount of storage space and hardware capabilities of a cell phone.

When it comes to capturing images on your cell, think of your camera as a shot glass and a digital camera as 44 oz diet Pepsi.

Digital cameras have the ability to capture much more image information than a cell phone

Everyone above is right. The image is just a tiny image in the first place and you can't do much with it.

If you don't have much detail in the picture, the result can be satisfactory. See: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7189769@N04...

Here's a related question that you might find interesting:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?...

first aspect of image quality is lens quality, have a look at the lens on your phone then look at a lens on a camera camera,

second phones have small cheap CCD's

also a factor is numba of mega pixs