Hasta La Gadget!

The iPad clearly needs a camera. Maybe not the fancy 5-megapixel, hi-def-shooting camera in the iPhone 4 – after all, who wants to hold a big slab up to snap photos? – but something for grabbing basic images would make Apple’s tablet way more useful.

Unless you want to wait for v2.0 next year, a case would be the only way to add a camera, and that’s just how Chet Rosales has managed it with his iPad Cam-Case. The concept case has an ugly fat strip up the side which has a camera at its top. This camera flips in its mount to fire forward or back, depending on whether you are videoconferencing or just snapping pictures.

Just think for a moment how useful this would be. Apart from Skype (sometime the only time I still wake my MacBook at weekends is to chat to my parents) and the usual quick snapshots, the big-screen iPad is perfect for augmented-reality applications, scanning and organizing business receipts (I still didn’t do my expenses from this year’s CES. Maybe with this I would have) and general photocopy duties: Being able to snap pictures of, say, your mom’s best brownie recipe and read it back full sized would be great (and fattening).

Chet’s cam-case is a concept, but we see no reason why such a thing couldn’t work: Apple lets add-on GPS units talk to apps as if they were built-in, so why not this? Clean up that design and I’d buy one right away.

iPad Cam-Case Product Design & 3-D Renders [Coroflot via Yanko and Laorosa]

See Also:

• IPad to Get Two-Megapixel Camera This Year
• Ten Things Missing From the iPad
• iPad Camera Connector Clones Five-Year-Old iPod Version
• IPad Camera Connection Kit Supports External Hard Drives