A method and apparatus for providing a camera accessory with compression

摘要

A method and apparatus is described for providing a camera accessory to a wireless mobile terminal in a wireless radiocommunication system. The wireless mobile terminal has an image data interface and a physical interface for detachably coupling the camera accessory thereto. One or more frames of image data is captured in the camera accessory and compressed according to one or more compression formats. The captured and compressed frames are transferred to the wireless mobile terminal over the image data interface. The camera accessory does not include a display. Image data is captured in a predetermined format including a CIF format. Still image frames are compressed using a JPEG format and an image stream is compressed using an MPEG format. The captured and compressed frames are transferred to the wireless mobile terminal over the image data interface using respective predetermined formats including RGB CIF, YUV CIF, JPEG, MPEG, and MPEG-4 with CIF to QCIF conversion format. The image data interface includes a wired interface and wherein the camera accessory derives a power supply from the wireless mobile terminal or includes a wireless interface.