When you take a picture on your phone, the camera turns the light signals into colour

values and stores a colour for each pixel.

Did you know?

An iPhone 6 has an 8

megapixel camera – that’s 8 million pixels

of data per picture!

8 million pixels is too large to store on a phone (about 32MB per picture), so your phone

squashes this in to a 2MB file. Your eyes can’t tell the

difference.

Did you know?

Each pixel colour is

stored as a binary code

Purple’s value is::

100110010000000010011001

#STEP3Once you have a file with an

image stored inside – you might want to share the file with a friend! So how does that data

travel from your phone to another computer?

Do you know what

WiFi stands for?

#STEP4Your phone splits the file into little packets of data and adds information to each packet to help it get where it needs to go. This includes who has sent the packet, where it is going and what packet number it is.

#STEP5Using your connection to the Internet (WiFi, or mobile

data), each packet is routed to the web server via multiple

routers. Each packet can take a different journey, it doesn’t

matter.

#STEP6When your friend gets your message their phone will

retrieve the packets from the web server. These will be sent in the same way as your phone sent them. Then their phone

will look at the packet number and rearrange the packets into

a file.

Did you know?Not all packets make it

and some need to be

resent

#STEP7Your friends phone looks at the stored data for each pixel and

turns the pixels on the touchscreen to the

corresponding colour.