Will.i.am shows the i.am+ camera for iPhone 4 at an October event in New York City. Photo: Getty Images

First reported in The Telegraph UK and picked up by a bunch of other sources over the weekend, true 14MP photography with your iPhone may come sooner rather than later.

Electronic music star and entrepeneur Will.i.am (of The Black Eyed Peas, of that track broadcast from Mars — same guy) has announced the i.am+, an accessory for iPhone 4 and 5 series devices, which adds a 14 MP camera to your device. As much info as I can find and my thoughts after the jump. >>>

The i.am+ is not a resolution-ramping photo app, but a hardware accessory that docks onto to your iPhone.

Will.i.am told The Telegraph:

We have our own sensor and a better flash. You dock you phone into our device and it turns you smartphone into a genius-phone. We take over the camera.

Once docked with your iPhone, it turns your device into a 14 MP camera. More megapixels don’t necessarily translate into larger pictures, but can go far in helping smaller, more manageable photos retain their sharpness, color, and clarity.

The star has also purchased the web domain www.i.am. There’s currently a placeholder at the site, but based on comments made by the star, there may be some sort of photo social network available to owners of the i.am.+.

Availability and pricing are scheduled to be announced at an event in London this week. We’ll keep you updated.

I’m anxious to see the image quality from this accessory. Camera sensor quality has improved greatly over the past year. In fact many of us expected a resolution bump in the iPhone 5 camera. Personally, I’m glad Apple went with the sensor they used. I like the new camera’s low-light capabilities.

The i.am+ could be a great add-on if the end results can get you results more like the Nokia 808 PureView camera, where many pixels on the sensor were averaged to improve picture quality, rather than simply making iPhone photos HUGE. If done correctly, digital zoom using an i.am+ could provide significant improvements over the current iPhone’s offerings, as there will be more raw pixels to crop down from reducing the need to resample the image.

For the purists, in the end, it’s a separate attachment not the iPhone camera. It’s a completely new piece of hardware that bypasses the iPhone’s hardware. One could make the same argument that this is simply an extension of add-on lenses for the iPhone, but I disagree. Clipping on a new lens enhances the existing hardware — it doesn’t bypass it altogether.

Will.it come in any color other than “bling?”

But the bottom line is, regardless of the sensor inside, will.the i.am+ take good pictures? If it does, the guy who wrote “My Humps” could teach Apple a thing or two about iPhoneography.

=M=

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