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Nokia Shows Off Megapixel Camera Phone
Anonymous Coward writes "According to PC World, the Nokia 7610 has been announced at Cebit in Germany - it boasts a megapixel camera (1152 x 864 pixels), 65,000 color screen, and 4x zoom, along with an MP3 music player and smart phone features that allow users to manage and edit digital images. It can also create short films of up to 10 minutes and with the Movie Director application users can add special effects and music to the video clips." Other readers point out a picture of the phone, which comes with the LifeBlog software "to help people organise the information they capture about their lives on handsets."
I assume that's 4x digital zoom, not optical.
That's only 995328 pixels.
As the resolution of the sensor increases in cell-phone cameras, Image quality is going to suck even more because of the crappy little lens used in them.
I've had it with mobile-phones... when something new like this comes out, they cost like 2000$, and when the prices are low enhough for the average person to buy something new has been released. Im happy with my Ericson T65, and as long as it survives the daily beating i give it, i will keep it.
this is probably the most boring sig in the world
Well, that's great and all...seeing technology advance like this.
But, honestly who buys a phone for the CAMERA? Now we're packing in video editing software and whatnot. Is this really necessary? The quality is usually so poor that it's not worth the small size...
Yea, I own an LG-VX6000, and I tell you this...I bought it for the actual features it has as a phone and not the camera. I've taken a few pictures with the camera, and put simply...there can be no replacement for film and digital cameras anytime in the near future.
If you want to take pictures..buy a camera! It will be a better investment of your money.
I can understand combining a phone, camera, and mp3 player since they are all features that fit into a nice small form factor. I think that this will put a lot of the mp3 players and lower-end digital cameras out of buisness. After all, everyone wants a cell phone, why not get an added feature for just a $$ more. Combining a hand-held game however doesn't really fit the profile though, as with the N-Gage.
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Have traditional cameras been banned too?
What do you do, leave your cell phone on the ground somewhere while you go in and change?
Why not just fucking beat the shit out of anyone that improperly uses a camera of any type in a changing room? I think that'd be more effective, and quite a bit more fun. And free phone calls too!
I've personally owned four handsets in my time, and through work I've had the experience to use dozens of others, and when asked by others which manufacturer to go for when buying a phone I don't hesitate to say Nokia. But, having seen some of its recent designs, including this one, I can't help but think that the people in Nokia's design teams are losing it.
Just look at the numeric keypad portion of this new handset. Then look at the numeric keypad of any handset you have to hand. Unless you own a quirky model, the odds are that your current numeric keypad is little different to that on a wired phone: four rows of three (1-2-3, 4-5-6, 7-8-9, *-0-#) arranged in a grid-like fashion with similar-shaped and -sized buttons.
This traditional configuration is great, because it allows you to dial numbers easily by touch alone, even in very poor lighting or total darkness. Now tell me how you're meant to do that on this new handset? 3, 6, 9 and # are pretty well vertically aligned but 1, 4, 7 and * are pratically sloped at 45 degrees.
Now I don't know about you, but if I was dialling without looking (something that's child's play on most phones) I'd expect the 7 to be two buttons directly below the 1, but on this handset, if you drop two buttons vertically down from 1 then you're hitting 8. Which means that to dial a number on this handset you're pretty much forced to look at the keypad as you dial. That's poor design.
Sure, sure, it looks pretty enough. But if how a handset looks even comes in your top three criteria when buying a new phone (above, say, features/functions, battery life and size/weight) then you're a fool.
The unwritten first rule of useability and ergonomics is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". The traditional keypad layout works, and it works damn well: it looks like someone needs to remind Nokia of that.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Megapixels is the most idiotic resolution measurement system ever. Quick, what resolution does 3 megapixel equal? 3.2? 4? 5? IF THE CAMERA HAS A RESOLUTION OF 1152x864, just fucking say so.
Weight is the most idiotic dimension measurement system ever. Quick, what dimensions do 3 kg equal? 3.2? 4? 5? IF THE IRON SLAB HAS DIMESIONS OF 10x3x7 cm, just fucking say so.
My point being: Absolute resolution is one thing, but megapixels are quite useful for a quick quality approximation. Just as you know that a 20 kg backpack will be a hell of a lot more back-breaking than a 5 kg one, megapixels can give you an idea of what to expect from a camera.
I'm not saying megapixels tell you everything, though.
PS. My appologies to the metricly challenged.
.: Max Romantschuk
Why do all these comments get modded up? Would you mod up someone who said "I don't want RAID support in Linux, I just want an OS that lets me read my mail"?
"I don't want an arpanet with scifi mailing lists, I just want to exchange military information!"
"I don't want a computer that plays pong and does spreadsheats, I just want to crack german codes!"
"I don't want to melt rocks and make tools, I just want a nice heavy one to throw at my enemies!"
For crying out loud...
IF THE CAMERA HAS A RESOLUTION OF 1152x864, just fucking say so.
I suppose you'd also prefer if auto manufacturers told you that a cars engine was a 84x90 vs simply stating that it has a 3litre engine? Point is that most people don't give a crap if its 1152x864 or 1280x768, 1MP gives a more than close enough approximation.
The phone you reference is from Japan which has had superior phone technology for many years. It is fair to say a phone that comes out in Japan today will take at least two years to have a US/European competitor.
Nokia is not so much behind the times but, much as every other vendor, is is behind Japanese phone technology.
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I just want to make a damn call from the thing, but the keypad is not very well designed for punching up a phone number. Cell phone keypads have become an ugly mess as of late. I don't need it to do anything but make calls, and have a phone book. I don't need a camera and I have a gameboy. geeze.
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
I'll admit that the functionality and versitility of these new phones sound great, but it really begs the question, how much is too much?
It's hard enough to pry some people off a computer and make them, oh let's say, take a walk outside. I don't know if I could handle seeing every other person sitting at a park bench "appreciating" the scenery by listening to an mp3, taking pictures, and posting them in their blog.
It's probably inevitable. I just hope we don't let technology govern what little part of our everyday life that we have left that isn't affected by technology.
You shouldn't complain about phones that are clearly not marketed towards you. Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, etc. have absolutely huge ranges of phones. They cater for just about every market niche you could concieve of. One consequence of that however it that many/most phones will have features that you have absolutely no interest in. Do you complain that trucks have way too many features, and are way too bulky, when all you want is something to pop down to the shops in? No you don't (I hope!). This is exactly the same thing however. Does this phone look like it is trying to be a solid reliable business phone? Does it look like it even knows what a solid reliable business phone is? No, but plenty of other models do.
Wow, this sounds great, but how does this PHONE do with making PHONE CALLS? You know, the thing you use your phone for 90% of the time? I'd bet that most people who have camera/mp3/video/whatever capabilities in their phones probably use those for about 3 days until the "look, it's cool" factor wears off, then they just talk on their phone like normal people.
--Stupid Sig Here--
> ... plenty of other models do.
My observations have been different... while the 2-3 year old design works well, I would have hoped that a phone company would have extended an excellent design such as the 8310 to provide robust wireless integration to motor vehicles. It seems that developments in mobile phones these days have become more concerned with style than substance. The reply about the 6310i is interesting but still makes me compromise on size - and leaves me wondering about issues relating to "always-on" Bluetooth. Surely it should not be a problem to listen for Bluetooth messages from my car without seriously adversely affecting battery life?
I'm not complaining about this phone per-se, but I am complaining that all mobile phone makers seem to have abandoned the idea that functionality improvements in core features will drive sales - especially considering the substantial demand.
Phone(NOW)==Watch(NOW) Hey I know that lots of younger people don't wear any watches anymore in Finland. Mobilephone shows time always when on. While its not as convenient to take one from you pocket that check you wrist. Some just don't wan't to carry one more thing in their wrist, and there fore they use the thing they carry anyway. After I run out of batteries in my current whatch I might do same thing. Only reason I keep whatch that is convenient in sauna and when I'm in hurry.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
"I'm sure it can create short films of 10 minutes... that's if you don't mind a low resolution low framerate compressed-to-hell pixellated blob resembling vomit!"
I have a Nokia 3650, and yeah it has a movie mode. Yeah it's postage stamp sized. Yeah it's pixellated. You know what? I have a video of my phone of my dog and cat playing together. It is low res and pixellated, yet you can still tell what's going on in the 'movie'. I captured a cute short-lived moment that would have been missed if I had run to the other end of the house to grab the DV cam.
I guess my point is that it may be technologically disappointing, but that doesn't mean it isn't still interesting.
"Derp de derp."
Nokia seems to have this weird fixation of pushing more and more weird keypads to their phones one after another. Not that they are the only ones, something like Siemens SX1 is even worse, but still...
What's wrong with the good old squarish design with all numeric keys being at least approximately same size & shape?