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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.
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.
I agree. A phones get more functions I don't need, the actual phone functions get worse. For that reason I still use an old Nokia 6310, which seems to be the best pure phone ever made. Long battery life, very good reception, good sound and good easy to use adresbook. Oh, and a keyboard someone with thich fingers can use, and good voice dialling when you've got you hands full.
The resoloution is very poor. Consider taking a photo of an A4 page (210*297mm) with a 3 megapixel camera. This gives 1456 pixels across the short edge of the page (ignoring the difference in aspect ratios - digicams are usually 4:3, A4 paper (or any of the A-series sizes) are 1:sqrt(2)) which works out at 7 pixels/mm, or 176 dpi. Compare that with a scanner, which is typically 300 or 600 dpi.
And, even if you did get the resolouting by stitching multiple photos together, the lighting would be no where near as even as the lighting in a scanner.
See http://www.rootsworks.com/ocr/digicamocr.htm for an example of someone who tried it, and concluded that "The bottom line? It's not worth the trouble unless you have clean copy and get a sharp photo - and a really close up one of a small section at that. I can type it faster than I can OCR it, and correct it."
color accuracy and purple fringing are most definitely related to the lens. I wouldn't be surprised if they're all using the same mass produced CCD chip.
Fax output (and yes, people still use them, alongside email), is IIRC 150dpi, and all the OCR vendors make capital of being able to scan a fax (yes, really), and being able to OCR that. So your 176dpi should be good enough for some industrial espionage.
"She's furniture with a pulse"
No. 3 is very applicable in the UK where phones are heavily subsidised by call costs and it's often cheaper to upgrade your phone than buy a new li-ion battery when the one in your current phone stops holding a decent charge - for example, I manage 14 phones on contract with Orange - one of my users asked about upgrades and wondered if there was a remote chance of a PDA phone (the Orange SPV M1000) - I checked with our Orange account manager and the upgrade cost for this user is £25. Three other upgrades processed at the same time were 'free of charge'. Yep - phones are 'disposable' at the end of their 12 month contract period - in the Uk at least.
AT&ROFLMAO
But does have:
- A prefix search of your contact list one button away from the home screen. Some phones hide this away, and it's the most important feature. Other phones I've seen have a substring search - if you hit 'C', you get every entry with a C in it, rather than moving to the ones starting with C. And this one lets you enter more than one letter in your search; some start a new search if you enter a second letter. Handy if you have lots of numbers.
- Several phone numbers for each entry: Home, Home2, Office, Office2, Mobile, Mobile2, Pager, Fax, Fax2, None. Handy; for a lot of people I have an apartment number, a parents' house, a cell phone, and an office number. My last phone only let me enter three numbers per contact, and I had to name one of those something completely inappropriate. (Calling the parents' house a "Fax" number or something.) I wish it let you customize the labels, but oh well. The only phones I've seen that do that are these huge Motorola things.
- A flip cover. Protects the display, provides longer battery life by allowing the display to shut off, and makes good UI sense - never worry about forgetting the key lock and dialing numbers from your pocket.
- A speakerphone. Handy if you have to call tech support and end up on hold forever.
- Analog service.
- Good battery life.
- Caller ID-based ring tones, so you can know who's calling right away. (And they're downloadable, I think.)
- A "recent calls" thing a button away. Hit send-send from the home and you call the last person in your dialed, received, or missed calls.
- An alarm clock. The only non-phone tool I use all the time. Handier than a true alarm clock because you can set it quickly with the numeric keypad. Plus the act of flipping open the phone and hitting the button is a little less reflexive than hitting a huge snooze button, so it's more likely to wake me up.
- A speed dial, one two or three digits. Either hold down the last one or hit send. I don't use it much, though - I can never remember which number is which.
It's a good phone and fits me well. LG really has the best UI. My only real complaints are:It has a few other features (schedule, voice memo, notepad, ez tip calc, full calculator, world clock) that I never use but someone else might find helpful. And a couple stupid "my pictures" / sounds / animations things. Also voice dialing.
I don't see any way to block numbers at the phone level, though. Sorry. Similarly, it'd be nice if a phone could have contact entries that don't show up in the main phonebook. I admit it, I've got a few phone numbers in there that I keep only to know I shouldn't answer the phone if they call. I want to see the name on the caller ID, but I don't want to have to scroll past it. I'm picky about the number of button presses to make a phone call. It has contact groups, but the main phonebook always shows all groups. You have to hit several more buttons to see just one.
> Would it kill them to put a cover over the lens
;)
:)
No, but it *would* increase the unit-cost. Most mobile phones now (apart, obviously, from the high-end smartphones such as the Sony Ericsson P800/P900/P910 or the Nokia 9xxx series) are built & sold on the "stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap" philosophy. Increase unit cost by, say, $5 a piece and they'll lose market share to those that don't do so. I know this because, up until very recently, I worked for a company which provides operating systems for high-end phones, and had some contact with people who actually make decisions about what features go into what phones.
And, let's be honest, who buys a phone to take photographs - it has to make calls & receive calls - everything else is a bonus.
> I've yet to dispose of a cell phone
Me either - in the sense that you mean (i.e. throw it in the garbage). I still have all the cell phones I've ever owned. However, I meant disposable in the way you describe (i.e. give it away, cannibalise it, whatever). So actually you have "disposed" of the phones - YOU no longer using them as phones. I should probably have used less ambiguous language
> I hardly have $250-500 per year to spend on the latest phone
Fair comment, but in some locations, the network operators heavily subsidise the cost of the phones themselves, in order to get you to sign a one/two year contract. My current phone (Sony Ericsson K700i - Phone + Camera + MP3 + Radio etc.) for instance, was a freebie. The K700i is a lousy camera (it's VGA resolution, but has a crappy lens and the CCD scanout is woefully slow). The MP3 & radio audio quality doesn't come close to my iRiver H340 - but are handy occasionally. But at least it lets me make phone calls
And of course, there are some very large markets (notably those in the Far East) where having the latest phone is an absolute must - and people will be prepared to drop $500/year to have the latest gadget.
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
Can I get a phone that is just a phone please?
Not trivially, no. There are many reasons for this. First, "just a phone" is a term that is in flux. Certainly 15 years ago, that meant a device that was attached to a wall either directly or by a short cord, and converted your face-noise to analog signal on a copper wire.
So, what you're saying now is you want a wireless phone-like device. Then you say you want to block numbers... well that's not really a phone-like thing at all. Certainly not a phone-like thing when measured against what phones have done for the last 50 years!
You're asking for a new device. While your wish list is nice, to ignore the wish list of the vast majority of other customers would be neglegent on the part of the management of the cell phone manufacturers.
No I don't want a crappy digital camera on my phone.
And yet, the idea of camera phones has caught on like wildfire, and is one of the single most popular modifications to the basic cell phone since user-downloadable ring-tones. I'm not saying you're wrong not to want this, but to act as if the industry is going off half cocked and ignoring the customer is putting blinders on to who the customer really is.
No I don't want a crappy music player on my phone. No I don't want a crappy web browser on my phone.
Granted, implementations of these features have been lame to say the best.
What the world really IS waiting for is a decent, way to manage contacts. Now that phones are portable, we NEED a way to have our numbers move with us as trivially as that note-pad that we used to keep by the phone pre-cell. Replacing a phone should not be traumatic, but because of the proprietary formats involved it IS. You usually need a for-pay version of Outlook on Windows just to read the data from your phone. This makes no sense.
I WANT A PHONE THAT IS A PHONE. Jesus christ.
Once again, define phone.
Mono screen. Monophonic ringtones. Phone calls and SMS text messaging only - no MMS, no WAP, no internet. No camera. The only "toy" feature is a white LED torch on the top.
Small without being fiddly - keypad is pretty decent, menu system is Nokia's normal pleasant low-end-phone one again.
Most importantly - my mum has no problem using hers at all.
link to nokia's product page