Two Megapixel Cameraphone Shootout

Siddharth Raja writes "It's been almost exactly a year since MobileBurn published their last 'horribly un-scientific' test of 1MP cameraphones. This time, they take the latest two megapixel models from Sony Ericsson and Nokia and put them through their paces. The tests cover aspects ranging from lens distortion and contrast to exposure. Nokia's phone uses a custom lens solution from Carl-Zeiss, but it looks like the Sony Ericsson phone still has better optics. On the flip-side, the Nokia phone is better with colours and calculating the white balance."

Comments

Just what everyone needs

[Intron]

I think that this article is the perfect context for Buy Nothing Day. Talk about excess and waste.

I want a comparison with 2-megapixel CAMERAS

[dpbsmith]

What I really want to see is a comparison between a 2 megapixel cameraphone and a half-decent 2 megapixel digital camera, such as were top-of-the-line just a few short years ago?

My Canon SD110 "Digital Elph" served me very well for three or four years, until I replaced it with a 4-megapixel model. It had very pleasing color rendition. I've been quite satisfied with 8x10 enlargements from it even though they are very slightly softer than the pictures from my wife's 5-megapixel camera.

So the question for me is: if I was happy with a good 2 megapixel "digital camera," if I bought a 2 megapixel cameraphone would I be equally happy with it?

Re:I want a comparison with 2-megapixel CAMERAS

[nine-times]

Right. I had that same sort of question, and I suppose the answer is no. I have yet to see a camera phone that delivers a picture as nice as my 1.3 megapixel Elph from several years ago. Then I look at how small other things are getting:

• The RAZR is thin, in spite of being pretty feature-rich
• The iPod nano is tiny, has 4GB of storage, color screen, etc.
• The PSP isn't too huge, considering it has all the power of a PS2
• There are new tiny 5-7 megapixel cameras from most major digital camera companies (like the new Elphs and the Sony DSC-T? line)

And, stupid as I might be, I can't help but wonder, why can't someone make a good mp3/camera/phone that isn't too enormously huge? Like, just the phone parts of the RAZR, with no mp3/game/camera stuff, and how much space could that take up? How small and light of a phone can we make, if it's just a phone?

Now, most of the parts are replicated for each device. The LCD screen, the memory, casing, battery, etc. So take those out of the equation. How small could Canon or Sony make a camera (even, lets say, a 1.3 megapixel), ignoring the LCD, casing, battery, or memory? If you took those parts, and integrated them into the just-phone-parts of the RAZR, how much space would that really take up? Now find a way to squeeze in enough parts to replicate the functionality of the nano, but again ignoring the casing, battery, duplicate functions, etc.

Ok, so maybe it stil wouldn't be the tiniest device ever, but given how these various companies can make single-function devices that are really tiny and most of the space is taken up by elements that are common to all of these devices, I'm consistantly disappointed by the attempts to make an all-in-one device. Even the expensive ones are horrible.

Can't someone make a decent camera-phone with mp3 functionality and 4GB of memory built in, and put it in a reasonable-sized package? Where's the culprit in preventing this? Bad engineering? Cell-phone carriers? Sony not wanting to damage their digital camera business?

Now, *this* is the phone I want...

[pieterh]

Nokia has dropped the ball and are believing their own marketing fluff. No-one actually wants a Carl Zeiss lense on their phone. No-one cares how good the optics are on a phone. Optics snobs buy cameras.

Seriously - rather than trying to turn phones into appliances, Nokia should learn from Apple and see that what people want are tiny, elegantly simple gadgets that do just one thing and do it very well. Instead of a phone costing $900, make one costing $20, and you can expect people to buy many.

How about a phone stripped down to just:

  - GSM module
  - speaker
  - mike
  - battery
  - on/off button

Carries a single number and dials this when it's switched on. About the size of a fat CF card. Pretty colors. Very cheap - $10-20. I wrote this idea up on: http://www.shouldexist.org/.

Re:Now, *this* is the phone I want...

[x102output]

no way. After buying a Nokia 3650, I am obcessed with the idea of having a digital camera on my phone. It's great because it is always with you. Whenever someone forgets to bring a camera, you got a backup. For that hot girl, that awesome concert, or even to sneak picturs at the museum. what sucks the most is when you look at the pictures on your computer, the 1-megapixel just doesn't cut it. I can't wait till I got 5 mexapixels on my phone

Re:What is the point?

[squiggleslash]

They're getting better. My V635's camera may not be as good as my old Kodak, but largely it's a resolution issue now not a "This looks like an effing webcam" problem, and at 1.2 megapixels, with expandable memory via MMC-compatable "Transflash" cards, it's "good enough" (that is, better than I'd achieve with a regular disposable film camera) quality and overall vastly more useful.

"Aha", I pretend to hear you cry, "But if the Kodak's still better, why not use it?" Answer, because (a) the old Kodak doesn't work any more, and (b) (more importantly) I couldn't carry the Kodak around all the time, it was too big, and carrying it AND an iPod AND a phone AND a wallet is uncomfortable. So, from my point of view, despite being a cameraphone hater two weeks ago, the V635 is a vast improvement on what I had before. In addition to being a cellphone, it's a good-enough camera that goes where I go. And I'd imagine the same is true of the cameraphones reviewed here too.

Warning: rant ahead

[Control Group]

[RANT]
Am I the only person who wants to know how, exactly, deciding which cell phone was better became deciding which camera was better?

What does a camera have to do with a cell phone, really?

When I went to buy a phone recently, the only thing any salesperson wanted to talk to me about was the cameras. I could not care less about the camera, but I ended up with one anyway. At the same time, a feature I really wanted to have - that my old, dying phone had - I couldn't find on any of the "better" new phones: a nested phone book, so that one name (one entry in the phone book list) could be associated with multiple numbers from which I could choose after selecting the name. Instead, every phone I saw had a strict one-number, one-listing phone book.

I really don't care if a phone has a feature I'm not going to use, but I do care if it has that and not features I actively want. Particularly when the features I actively want actually have something to do with being a phone.
[/RANT]

Re:Warning: rant ahead

[nblender]

I didn't want a camera phone either. Then someone gave me a T610. It had a camera; albeit crappy. Then I bought a K750i which came with an equally unwanted camera but it turned out to be good enough to take pictures of the scene of a minor car accident I was in. The other driver lied to his insurance company and they refused to cover the claim. I produced pictures taken by my camera phone to prove he lied to his insurance company. They fixed my truck and he doesn't have insurance anymore. Now I like camera phones.

Re:camera phones

[manojar]

we are not talking about people who would be carrying around their cameras all around (even though they might become very small to fit in the pocket), this is for people who would like to capture that interesting scene which would disappear by the time you switch on your camera and aim at that. Also, why to carry many devices when one would do the job as well?