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Megapixel Cameraphones Compared
prostoalex writes "MobileBurn published a 'horribly un-scientific' test of three megapixel cameraphones. The contenders are the Sony Ericsson S700i, the Siemens S65, and the Motorola V710." Sadly, none of the phones seem to be able to perfectly capture a mere school bus in image form.
Of course, it's only a phone, but it's a good tool aimed at taking both vocal and video notes.
I use mine to take VGA pics and I am very happy with their imperfections...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The problem with cameraphones is largely the lenses. They suck.
For several reasons:
1) They have to be small (it's a phone, it has to be easily pocketable)
2) They have a very hard life compared with a "real" camera.
3) Most people now view mobile phones as disposable items, replacing them every year or so, so there's not a whole lot of point in spending a lot of money on a decent lens.
(Could this ever be the first RELEVANT first post on slashdot?)
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
seems to have excellent photo quality for a mobile phone. It has pretty much functions from normal digital camera that makes it very usefull. SE's S700i platform is the same from K700 phone but s700 supports memory sticks. You can read a very good review here:
Phone
Phone's camera
Fucking a fat girl is like riding a scooter... it's fun 'til someone sees you.
Sometimes it's simply just better to use the cellphone cameras like they are supposed to be used? Simply, take photos.
Still, I'd probably prefere a normal camera over a cellphone with camera-function bundled.
Sure then need to improve; I generally use to take snap on move using N6230. These camera phones not mean to change your dig cam. When I go on vacation I use my 5MP dig cam. I use Nokia 6230 only in day to day life for funny pics; for example y'day I took the photo of Tweety (kids store selling tones of them) to show little kid and if they wanna later I can get one for them; and I was on biz trip.
Why are they building a phone w/ a three megapixel digital camera, when I still can't get a decent basic cell, that's small and has a weeks worth of battery per charge.
Don't use your megapixel camera phone to take pictures of school busses. You'll get lynched.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
and most importantly
sigs, as if you care.
Why can't submitters put mirrors up before before the actual slashdotting? Mirror sites can't do their job when the worse has alread happened!
this test isn't too meaningful. look at the 4th page and its just a case of opinion. i prefer the look of the S700i to the S65 but the S65 'won' that round. i guess its an ok test to get a basic idea. like not to buy the V710 if you want to use a 'decent' camera.
I think the most intriguing use of camera phones is for OCR. Of course to make it work you'd need WiFi or WiMax rather than regular wireless telephone protocols. But if you could stitch together a few shots per page and quickly upload them to your home computer form the library, well that would be interesting.
http://www.mirrordot.com/
Can I get a phone that is just a phone please? Or a phone that excels in phone-based things? I've yet to see a cell phone that lets me block numbers at the phone level, rather than PAYING to have a number blocked with the service provider. No I don't want a crappy digital camera on my phone. No I don't want a crappy music player on my phone. No I don't want a crappy web browser on my phone. I WANT A PHONE THAT IS A PHONE. Jesus christ.
The major difference between the contestors in the test is their ability to get the colors right. That problem is not related to lenses.
- How often do you have difficulty hearing on a mobile phone?
- How often have you seen this portrayed on TV and in film?
I'd say it's 90% for the first and 0% for the second. (I haven't seen that Kim Basinger film yet; maybe it will be the first?) Can it be an accident that visual media producers do not portray this commonplace of our lives? Or are these folks getting rewarded by the mobile-phone industry for keeping the terrible sound quality a sort of unspoken secret?Cell phone companies (and I work for one of them) are desperately trying to make money out of their cellular phone. One of the huge market is teenagers because they tend to want to differentiate themselves and they are willing to pay for that new and cool ring tone or SMS feature, or game, or color and what not.
;) ), cameras, pictures, games, and what not.
I personally couldn't have imagined someone paying for a ring tone on his/her cell phone; and the ring tone business is apparently worth billions of dollars these days. Those who saw this coming were quite clever I guess, but isn't it sad that people are spending money on crappy MIDI stuff for their cell phone?
So cell phone companies pack their devices with close-to-useless features like MIDI player for polyphonic ring tones (many people at my work call it polymorphic 'cause that's what they remembered of C++
But seriously, don't you think the majority of people will use those extra features a few times only, mostly to show others how cool and different their new toy is and then they'll forget about them because they are what they are: useless for a cell phone.
I wonder how this confusion will end? The difference between your average PDA and a cell phone is what now? They both play MP3s, take pictures, are organizers, are wireless cell phones, support bluetooth, are WIFI enabled, can act as vibrators; but generally speaking, they do one thing hopefully right: your PDA is probably (hopefully) a better organizer than the organize feature on your cell phone; the rest is useless crap designed to differentiate the device on the market.
When we received our new cell phone at work, everyone, for about a week, was spending countless hours on ring tones, taking pictures, playing that stupid mini putt game, enabling Bluetooth and wandering around for another Bluetooth soul willing to answer, etc., etc.
Now; yeah sure everyone has his/her own "personal" ring tone differentiator, but the damn cell phone is used a cell phone, the extra features are now what they are: useless.
Schoolbus ? i thought all camera phones were made just for taking voyeur pictures
Business Voyeur
A lot of people come out with comments like "I want a phone that's just a phone" or "I don't need/want these features when I can get better separate units that do the same thing". This is really silly.
I don't know what the American market is like, but here in the UK, I got a Nokia 7610 for 50GBP (that's less than $90) on a very reasonable contract (500 free minutes per month and other goodies for 25GBP / $40 pm).
Although I have a much better PDA (Palm Tungsten T3), and a much better digicam (Canon Powershot A80) and a much better MP3 player (iPod Mini), guess how much of the time I'm carrying all of these around with me? Practically ziltch. But, I do almost always have my phone with me, 24/7.
So, the times I've forgotten my camera, the megapixel camera on the phone is great for a quick and dirty picture of something interesting or important. When I don't have room for my PDA, the phone is great for recording a memo or checking my diary (I sync both with the same desktop PIM, and it mostly works). It's also cool that when I don't have time to pack the iPod, I can take a short journey and still listen to almost a whole album at 128kbps from the 64MB SD card.
The phone is a great phone by itself, with excellent contact management, call management, logging and other features. Since it was so cheap, these extras are essentially bonuses. It's also hardly bigger or heavier than a "normal" cellphone. It also has the trademark Nokia battery life of several days. This is quite sufficient even when on the road, especially since every third person you meet seems to have a universal Nokia charger stowed away somewhere.
I look forward to the day when I can put my PDA, iPod and camera in the drawer forever, and I think we might only be a few years shy of it. Until then, I will enjoy my phone and its extras, using the additional separate devices when I want better quality.
And thanks to my contract, I get a brand new smartphone every year.
For the love of god, I just want a phone that can actually make a phone call from within my apartment. Or even on my patio.. or down at the corner.
I have T-Mobile (work phone) and have 0 signal within a 1/8th mile radius of my apartment. AT&T, Cingular, MetroPCS, and Sprint are all terrible around here as well. Only phone that gets "2 bars" is a Verizon one, and even that's spotty.
I do *not* live in the boonies. I'm in an east SF bay area with over 250,000 people. Definately not BFE.
Instead, we get ringtones, games, and flippin *cameras* that take lousy photos.
GSM seems to suck in the US. I rarely had coverage problems with my old TDMA phone.
Three points:
.3megapixel you can take useful pictures that may serve a purpose.
1. Cellphones come in different models, some with cameras, some without. Happily, the ones WITHOUT cameras are usually cheaper, which is great for those that don't want "extra stuff I will never use."
2. Cameras on a cellphone are extremely useful because it's WITH YOU all the time, and with relative ease you can send a picture from where you took a picture to an arbitrary email address. Even on the low-end
3. The last thing you do before you die is crap your pants.
My eyes ache from rolling to the back of my head whenever I click on a slashdot cellphone article, because it always goes down this road (and yes, this post is part of that).
seems to have excellent photo quality for a mobile phone. It has pretty much functions from normal digital camera that makes it very usefull.
...
I have just played with it at a local store. Yes it's nice but the price was 800 euros. That's an insane price for a mobile phone. With as much money, you can buy a very good small digital camera AND a very good mobile phone.
And if you ever lose it or have it stolen
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
Are these the ones where taking the picture and sending it requires so much power that you are required to change the battery halfway through the shutter click?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
As for the size, the phone could be compared to the relatively small digital camera, which means that it is certainly bigger than the modern phones.
While the size wouldn't bother me at all, especially given the halfway decent quality of the pictures, I know a lot of people wo want the absolute smallest phone possible, so this probably wouldn't appeal to them. Looking at the pictures, it's almost like a camera with a phone built in, rather than vice-versa. Now, if I could get something like this that had the image quality of my coolpix 4300 or comparable cam, I'd be sold - but I suspect the small lens size is beginning to be a limiting factor; it looks like it's less than 1/4 the size of the lens on my cam.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Erm. the last 3 phones I have had could do this I think. 7610, 6800 and an ericsson. I think it can only block ones it can see. Withheld numbers get through ( I may be wrong ).
You can always set a 'muppets' ringtone so you know that a call is from someone you would prefer to ignore.
The new phones have a little OS in them so maybe you could delete all the junk you don't like. Or at least hide them.
I never use the organiser functions or the browser but it doesn't bother me thaat they are there.
Many people complain about battery life on phones, why not carry a spare if it is such a big deal?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
People have already mentioned why camera phones aren't up to snuff. I have a diminutive Canon SD200 which I love. I wish I could find an equally good phone. Instead, all the phones with bluetooth seem to also have a camera built in and therefore suffer in size and weight. Not everyone wants a mediocre phone/camera/camcorder/mp3 player, and I don't think it's possible due to ergonomics to make something that does all of those well.
Moderators, git'im.
I think you are forgetting:
4) Mobile phone screens are pretty poor and small - whats the point of having beautiful lense/photos when most camera screens only have tens of thousands of pixels (I know you can sync photos with your PC but I guess most users don't).
It appears the mobileBURN is a good name for their server...
....at band camp....
Sadly, none of the phones seem to be able to perfectly capture a mere school bus in image form.
Man, that's a real drag. I can't tell you how often I need to capture a mere school bus in image form. Not going to buy one of these phones.
About the only features one could consider frivolous on it are a few games and text messaging. Monochrome screen, crappy ringtones, no frills. Good reception, compact, solid (I don't even know how many times I've dropped it) and of course you can't get it anymore. I'm going to use mine until it breaks or AT&T shuts down their TDMA network.
The problem is that when you can get a "free" cameraphone with a color screen and polyphonic ringtones and downloadable games, why would anyone want something that does less? God forbid any company should make a phone with excellent reception and battery life and advertise it as such, because we certainly don't want that.
An N-Gage.
:D
The N-Gage has prefix search, several phone numbers for each entry (completely customizable with thumbnail and full picture, too), speakerphone (no side talking required!), no analog service (GSM rocks, baby!), good battery life, caller ID-based ring tones (which can be a recording with the mic, a midi, an mp3, etc), a "recent calls" button away (hit dial from the main telephone screen), an alarm clock/PDA calendar, and speed dial.
Unlike your complaints, the reception and battery life icons are big and easy to see on the top of the screen, you can customize the labels on your phone details, and it uses USB (which makes the MMC inside a removeable drive) or bluetooth for transfering data onto it, which means no losing any covers or having wires.
Best of all, the damn thing is super cheap because Nokia's trying to give them away
Considering the Motorola V600 (the closest in terms of features; quad-band GSM instead of tri-band, no removeable storeage, and a shitty VGA camera) is 600$, I'm glad I paid 250$ for my N-Gage.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I love my Nokia 7610.. I've heald the LG, and the Nokia is definately a step above the others.
Why Symbian? It gives developers more access to the phone than Java does. Things like:
-Fullscreen Caller ID
-Blacklist (sends anyone on it to voicemail)
-CallCheater (adds background noice to your call)
-Plays all N-Gage games
-3rd party IM program that supports voice & sending pictures over IM
-watch downconverted movies in widescreen
-NES emulator
-Sega Genesis Emulator w/perfect speed
That's just a tiny list of the hundreds (thousands?) of 3rd party apps and games available.
basically anything the other phones can do, symbian lets 3rd party developers do better.
I'm not that interested in a phone that can take pictures.
Now if someone would start selling cameras that can make a phone call... I'm there!
Many people deride camera phones, however I too have a 7610, and I'm completely in awe of its abilities.
Each raw image goes through 4 processing stages before it is displayed on screen or captured. I've seen technical articles detailing the condition of the image at each stage, and the transformation from unintelligible blur to relatively clear image is astounding.
The image processing that takes care of white balance in particular is striking. On many occasions I've gone from very dark to very light conditions or vice versa, and watched the viewfinder compensate. The nightmode doesn't make up for a flash, but in the absence of one it tries it makes a good effort. When you consider the lack of resources available to the system it's quite impressive. That and the fact that I can take continuous video for over ten minutes.
I noticed that the image of the "magic tree" has small ring-like forms in the surrounding trees. These are most clearly visible on the lower left of the leftmost tree. They have a bright middle, with a dark ring around them.
I suspect the V710 is mistaking these for the security details on banknotes. Hence the "unintentional hangups" whilst perhaps sending secret SMSs for law enforcement purposes.
Also, don't get caught taking pictures of school buses.