WIRED has just reported that the iPhone has beaten out the Canon Digital Rebel XTi as the most popular camera on Flickr. The new iPhone 3GS (which I own - actually a first for me given my aversion to phones that make me a little too reachable) is equipped with a spartan 3 megapixel auto-focus lens and no flash.

What can it do? Well, it's a camera that can also upload photos instantaneously into the cloud. Makes sense to me. But at least a few commenters on the post were aghast: "This is just pathetic." Or, "It’s sad that the iphone is considered a camera at all... as an avid flickr user and canon 5d mark ii owner (21 megapixels)... i would not have a contact on my stream with just iphone photographs because of the crap quality."

Sorry - we can't all own $2,700 cameras. But just for kicks, I thought I'd upload a shot I snapped with my iPhone 3GS to my computer and take a good look at it. Here you go:

Landing in Fort Lauderdale after my JetBlue flight from Boston. Taken with my new iPhone 3GS.

Didn't do the scene justice.

It's also not too bad for a device that lets me instantly identify songs I'm hearing, synchronizes with my Google Calendar, takes and backs up all kinds of notes, and lets me simulate hypothetical lunar landings.

So what does this iPhone 3GS "victory" tell us about photography? To be honest, I think it says more about Flickr than anything else. Flickr is what it is - a repository for people to share images they have created. Like the old MP3.com - a site ahead of its time - it is full of all kinds of content because there are no quality filters. And that's what it's designed to be. Let the purists whine and cry - we've always got Photo.net.

I'm more interested in what this tells us about mobility, the pervasiveness of the the connections we're forging, the ubiquitousness of access. A camera that fits in your pocket and let's you surf the net? Here's to happy moments rescued from the ethereal fading of time, injustices captured and shared for the world to see, inside jokes spotted and sent to faraway friends. I'm down - go iPhone.