[SOLVED] Commercially Used Camera Modules... Need Information Source

I don't know if many people here have worked with Digital Camera Modules... The probability of getting answered on edaboard is directly proportional to the commonness of what you're looking for. A few other posts of mine went unanswered probably because most people either didn't have any experience or thought the question was too dumb. In any case, I'd still be asking all my dumb questions here to find out how dumb they actually are.

Question:
If I want to use a camera in an embedded system, there are a lot of options.

The most common one is, I get a camera modules manufactured by professional camerae-producing companies. I'd get a datasheet and most probably, libraries for popular interface controllers to include in my code.

But what if I wanna go out of my way and pick up a camera already used in a commercial product? Like camera phones, digital cameras, etc... The biggest hurdle here is unavailability of an information source. Many places on web would give you a detailed overview of the product, such as "XXXX mobile phone has 5MP camera with this and this additional features", but where could I get the part number of the camera module used in that product.

Let's say I am very impressed with Sony Ericsson C-series camera phones. I wanna find out what camera module does C901 use. And then get the datasheet and (if available) other content like libraries for that module...

And I think there MUST be some place where I can get to know such kind of stuff... I just can't find it. Can anyone help me here?

Not that I know lot about the electronics industry, but I'd suspect that the choice of components (i.e. their Bill-of-Materials) of products from large multi-national consumer-electronics / imaging manufacturers are typically kept secret, including who does the assembling/sourcing (EMS) for them etc., because that in itself gives them a strategic advantage over their competitor and new entrants. However again, from the reading / listening I've done so far, usually this doesn't remain a secret for long, as enthusiasts (or hackers) eventually perform a detailed "tear-down", and reveal pretty-much everything that's in there. Sometimes, some manufacturers (I've seen this in some of the teardown of smaller devices I've done), try to obscure components by etching the surface, or put stickers that are very hard to remove etc. Finally, some common, high-volume consumer electronics (mobile-phones for instance) have their detailed schematics/BOM's made available by manufacturers to third-party service agencies, especially after their end of active-sales. This, I found to be true for many mobile-phones. AFAIK (and I don't know much), there is no single official source of such information, other than the manufacturer themselves.

Hey thanks a lot man, for giving such a nice detailed answer.
But I gotta say I'm a little disappointed. But then again, it's gonna be a lot of fun watching the tear-down videos of mobile phones on Youtube.
Thanks again.

You are welcome. BTW, did you know that EDAboard has a sub-forum for 'Service Manual request' !! So you can post a request for same, or search in the well-lit & dark corners of the cyberspace for the service-manual, and you might run into the details you are looking for !

PS> If you found my answers useful/helpful, feel free to click on "Helpful? Please Click:.."