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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."
So what does it do? Take pictures of your ear?
"I don't have to read the article, just give me gist of it."
-Homer Simpson
Now I guess the 1-900 sex lines will have to actually hire real women... and good looking ones at that! :)
Insert offensive troll-style sig here. Please mod or respond appropriately.
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.
There were commercials on tv for this over a month ago. It's still cool though. It shows that someone in the us is trying to catch up and replace our old crappy wireless phone tech. I'm still waiting for the all-in-one handheld device. Until then I'm not buying anything.
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. Yes, I know it will cost a lot of money, but I don't see it as an impossibility. We've already got combinations of the different parts, there just isn't something that encompasses all of them in one device. When someone finally does it, I'm there. Yes, I know about the treo and the clie, they come close, but not close enough.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Remeber the old belief (maybe true?) that telephones could be activated without a ring and so serve as covert microphones? With GPS and video cameras in these new cell phones, what sinister new uses could a covert turn-on enable? (Insert obvious p0rn reference here...)
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.
"I'm talking loudly in public about absolutely nothing! Are you looking?!?"
"Yeah, this movie is pretty fantabulous, hey...hold on a sec, I wanna show you the assclown behind me that keeps tell me to "hush".
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?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Can you see me now? ...
Good!
I saw CNN demo of that unit, it was getting 2-4 FPS, was in !Craptacular! (copyright, 2002 you may use the word Craptacular only by giving me a $0.25 licensing fee for each time you read/or use it. That will be 50 cents please!) 256 color over a slow-as-ass (again copyright 2002, same as above but only a 10 cent fee) analog conntection. This product is what I call Craptastic-ware (again copyright 2002, sorry this one has a $10 viewing and $5 re-use fee).
You bill is 10+5+.50+.10= $15.60
Based on the number of people that will read this say: 5000 that means I make a cool $78000
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
After thinking about this some more, I have gone from amused to extremely worried. A staple in the spy biz is sneaking in the tiny spy camera to photo the secret documents and / or the dead drop of the paper copies of those documents. As of this week, spies among us can just waltz in with their routine cell phones, zap the photos of the Iraq attack plan over the air, and nobody is the wiser. We have just gone from needing Tempest level security around just computers to needing that level of security whereever there is a safe.
"Expected battery Life: The 5300 will come packaged with a standard battery and an extended battery providing 2.7 hours talk and 10.4 days standby and 3.8 hours talk and 15 days standby, respectively."
:)
And approximately 5 photos in full resolution with flash...
Seriously speaking. The limiting factor today for wearable electronics does not seem to be the size or functionality that can be crammed into a palmsized shell but simply the battery time. Either you end up with something heavy, or you end up with something that only works for a couple of hours.
Cell phones are never going to be anything other than giveaways to sell the service. Once you start to charge real money, the phones have value and the theft rate makes the whole concept questionable.
Have them distribute a few thousand phones with some prepaid minutes in the DC area, so if anyone sees the sniper, they can grab a photo and transmit to police. Even if nobody uses their phone to catch the sniper, the media will talk about it for a while.
After that, they should have no problem finding real people for a "switch" campaign. "Sure I switched because it was a corporate giveaway, but then I discovered all these neat things I can do with the phone, so I'm keeping it."
Overheard:
"No, honey, I said put the phone up to YOUR _EAR_!."
-nd
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.
from strip clubs will never be the same.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
This service started a few years ago when I was in Japan. Like everyone, I got skeptic and said to myself "huh?". But if you think about it, it makes so much sense. How many times you guys went shopping for your wife and got the wrong product? Wouldn't it be simple to take a snap shot and send it to her cell phone? You'd get a confirmation right away. Think convenience... What if you get in a confrontation, accident, etc and want to take a quick picture? Hey this might enable police to find your killer if you get a chance to take a snapshot... Think security... You can think of many usefull things. Don't think of this as a high quality digital camera. You will never get this product for another 2-3 years (if not longer!). Think of it as a "digital post-it"... I never had the chance to use it while in Japan but some of my friends did and I can confirm it *IS* useful... (unlike some of you might think). No wonder why technology is far beyond Europe and Asia, every new product brings so much critisism from US buyers! Be open and accept it as cool, and not as "crap"...
-- Leeeter than leet
Now I can 'goatse' the soccer mom in the big SUV up in front of me who's not paying attention. All this high tech and somebody somewhere will surely waste it on digital mooning.