First US Camera/Phone

Ch_Omega writes "According to this article over at Infosync, Sprint has announced that the Sanyo 5300, the first US phone with a built-in camera, will be available on their PCS Vision network in mid-November. It's still only 640x480, but unlike Nokia and Sony Ericsson's models, it will have a built-in optional flash as well. The official press release from Sprint is here."

Comments

Sidekick

[Syre]

The T-Mobile Sidekick is out now and has a small camera that comes with it and plugs into the headphone port.

Works pretty poorly and takes tiny pics (160x120 I think?), but it is a camera... not quite built-in but a camera nonetheless.

Re:Does not add up

[Ch_Omega]

The topic is Michael's. What i suggested as topic, was "First US phone with built in digital camera"(or something), something I also state in the text below. I am aware of the allready released Sidekick, Ericsson T68i as well as the Nokia 92xx series, but none of those have a built in camera, and none of them have or support any kind of flash, as far as I know.

Yawn

[DNS-and-BIND]

Japan has had these things for a few years now. It's rather odd at first to see people pointing their cell phones at the buddhas, shrines, etc. It doesn't elicit the same reaction as when you see someone pointing a camera (politely get out of the way, don't step in front of a picture-taker when walking, etc).

It's also very popular for enabling teenage girls to find men willing to pay to have sex with them. You know the leading users of this will use it for pornography, right?

Re:Uh oh

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I saw this on google news yesterday: A British company is working on delivering porn on demand to your phone, to keep you entertained as you ride the bus home from work. :) Personally, although I know the camera/phone combo has proven popular in Japan, I think adding cameras to cellphones is rather overrated. One is bound to be sacrificing features on the camera (here, it appears to be resolution) and creating an unholy clutter in the process, although I have to admit the image in the article looks pretty good...

Re:Talk about old

[Ch_Omega]

"By all-in-one I mean I want a Digital Camera/Cell Phone/Pager/mp3 player/PDA with wireless networking all in one no bigger than palm-sized package."

Hmmm... the Sony Ericsson P800, will have a built in VGA-camera, MP3-player, 32bit OS(Symbian 7.0), bigger thouchscreen than most Palms(320x280x12bit), bluetooth(okay, not exactly WLan), and Sony Memorystick expansion slot. Ofcourse, it won't be released in a while, but it comes pretty close to what you want, doesn't it? :)

I've got one already :p

[Anonymous Coward]

I've actually got a phone with a camera on it (yeah, damn us pesky europeans) already, and I have to admit, it's been a damn good buy. The thing about a camera on your phone isn't that it's a particularly good camera, it's that you've always got it handy. The number of random snapshots I end up taking now at moments when I'd normally have said "Damn, I wish I had a camera" is amazing.
(For the record, I've got a Nokia 7650 - http://www.nokia.com/phones/7650 - which I can wholeheartedly recommend.)

Oh, and the camera faces the other direction from your ear. :)

The first US phone with a camera is Motorola T720i

[nsushkin]

If you're talking about phones made by a US company, Motorola T720i is probably the first one to come out. Eweek says that it's an 1xRTT Java phone that has an optional camera attachment. If's seems to be available for sale at Verizon's website, however no mention of the camera attachments there. Maybe Eweek confused T720 with A820... Anyway, the relevant links are below.

• Article describing recent phones supporting multimedia
  
• new 2002 handsets from Motorola
  
• Verizon selling T720i
  

Sprint support of Sanyos is crap

[gsfprez]

I stupidly bought the Sanyo 5150 (insert obligatory Eddie van Halen riff here), the precursor to this new phone.

The 5150 has Windows 98-2000-only (does not work on XP) software to allow you to upload images to the phone that act as walpaper or caller id - and no software for any other platform.

So, pray, what do i need to do to hook up the phone to my computer to put in those picts? That's $39.

Oh, did you want to sych up your contacts too? Thats a separate $29. Great. That's $70 just to use the functionality of the phone on top of the price of the phone.

And now, i have two serial connectors for my phone.. just what i always wanted.

And on top of it all - they STILL DON'T HAVE A FSCKING CAR KIT - even though there are menu selections in the phone's menus for car kit options. Ha.

For those that weren't knowing...These Sanyos were J-phone phones that came out in 2000(with a camera on the back. The lens was on one side of the battery release clip, the button, on the other side of the battery release clip) in Japan, but we can't seem to get any of those car kits imported.

I've grown weary of this phone...I use my phone in the car - and without a car kit - i'm forced to have wires all over the place.

Everyone else (besides Sprint) is going with more standard phones - Nokia, S/E, Moto. Everyone else is also going with more "standard" standards... GSM, GPRS, and Bluetooth.

I don't understand why Sprint can't cajole the major makers to make CDMA.... it leaves us that really want great service in the US stuck with "weird" phones.