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.

Comments

Not the point...

[mirko]

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...

Perfect Basic Functions First

[neomage86]

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.

Re:Perfect Basic Functions First

[SillyNickName4me]

> not something directly under most mfgs control as they don't design batteries, they buy them from others

1. I'm pretty sure that if Nokia wants a few milion batteries with certain specifications, battery manufacterors will gladly comply, so your argument does not hold.

2. The amount of features in modern phones requires them to be more powerfull and contain more electronics and as a result use more power then needed for simple phone and text messaging functions.

So yes, it is quite in the control of phone manufacterors.

No important stuff

[RealProgrammer]

Those were pretty pictures of cars and keyboards. Troll mode off, but who cares about subtle gradations of color in a telephone? I'd rather know about:

• How much memory do they have for images?
• How long do the batteries last?
• Do they have a firewire port, or just lame USB 1.0?

  and most importantly

• Are they decent phones?

Re:Lenses

[lordsilence]

Fecking 300£ every year for the latest cellphone? Hell no. I'm happy with my Nokia 6110. It does what it's supposed to do, make calls. Send SMS and eventually even have softwarecrashes. Just like the new cellphones (appart from the camerafunction) just less flashy.

Useless features worth billions of dollars

[irikar]

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.

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++ ;) ), cameras, pictures, games, and what not.

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.

Convergence isn't a bad thing!

[Ianoo]

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.

Re:Convergence isn't a bad thing!

[ajs]

Let's go a step further. I don't want a phone! I want a house and a car and a computer and whatever else... and they should all have build-in phones. We should stop thinking of the phone as a device with low-end appliances built in. We should be building phones into the best-of-breed appliances. Why shouldn't an iPod come with a cell phone build in? Reduces the number of items you have to carry by one, and doesn't even require a form-factor change.

Why not have that base-unit for your wireless keyboard and mouse also provide a (physically switched, thank you very much) speakerphone that speaks VoIP? Why do I need a second device on my desk?

Why should a car ever ship without a built-in phone?

Of course, much of the reason for this is financial. The cell companies fight hard against making it easy to move your phone between services, and if appliances came with built-in phones, people would demand that they be able to sign up or not sign up for a service of their choosing at their leisure, otherwise it's more of an extra fee, and they'll prefer devices without phones.

I think that can be overcome, though, regardless of how much the industry likes it.

right tool for the job

[vijayiyer]

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.