Recommend a camera-phone

In My Humble Opinion
1

Here’s the story…

I just bought a 3.2 megapixel Sony digital camera on open-box special. I’m really only planning to use it to take pictures to e-mail to friends or post on my web page.

After looking at Circuit City’s ad in today’s paper, though, I’m thinking of returning it and just getting one of those camera phones for about the same money. I already have a Sprint wireless phone, so it seems like this would be a good way to put two devices in one package. I’m concerned, however, about the quality of the pictures. I know it’s not going to be as good as with the Sony, but since my pictures are only going to be displayed on computer monitors, I figure a lot of the resolution on the Sony is being wasted anyway…

Does anyone who has one of these have any advice? What model do you use? How do the pictures look? How many pictures can you store at a time? Do they let you change the resolution or make any other adjustments? Would you mind e-mailing me a couple of pictures so I can see what they look like? Overall, would you recommend it to your friends? To your enemies?

2

I wouldn’t recommend a camera phone to anybody.

A short list of problems:

  • The pictures are small
  • The colors never seem “right”
  • Every phone camera that I have ever seen had a fixed focus lense, with no zoom.
  • Storage capacity is small
  • The pictures are generally not suitable for printing

There are some pictures from a phone camera (unknown model) posted to a skydiver message board here: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=503391;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread

3

Just to add: You won’t get anywhere near the resolution that even a fairly low end stand-alone digital camera can get. Phone cameras typically have a resolution of less than one megapixel.

4

Well, for my applications, those pics don’t look too bad. Since they’ll be on the web only and not printed, I don’t think there’s just a huge difference in picture quality. I also saw one model with a digital zoom… This may be the way I want to go.

Any other input?

5

I doubt you’ll ever hear anyone ever say “Boy I wish these pics had less resolution!”…

I just received my Sony Ericsson MCA-25 in the mail Friday. While it’s a fun little gadget, it’s definitely not going to replace my “real” digital camera.

Even though your pics are going to be “web only”, it’s nice to have the option of being able to print a nice picture if you want. And there is a “huge difference” in the picture quality- in terms of size, resolution, and clarity.

Why did I buy the camera phone? I guess to start with, I have a strange compulsion to spend my hard-earned money on silly gadgets. Since I already have a decent camera, I thought it might be fun to have a more “portable” backup camera to carry around (in fact, I used it at the Garden Supply Store today- I took a snap of a planter I was looking at and emailed it to my wife for approval… Geeky, I know…). Oh, and lastly, I won the auction at ebay at a great price.

Which actually leads to another drawback of these camera-phones: because they’re meant more for sending the images between phones, the only way to get the pics to your computer is to email them, and depending on the size of the pic you take, you’re going to be spending a couple minutes of cell time, and several kb of your data transfer allowance transferring each picture (assuming you already have the option for the data transfer on your service plan). With your Sony, you just connect the camera to your computer, or put the media card in a card reader, and your pics are there- no cell time or additional costs.

So my advice would be to stick with the “real” camera, and get the camera-phone, if you really want it, but just for fun…

6

Thanks, oceans_11. This reminds me of a couple of other questions.

This is another question I meant to ask in the OP. Can I send these pictures to anyone who has a phone with a color screen or only those who have camera-phones?

If I go this route and am able to get a phone on e-bay or something like that, do I just call Sprint and say, “Hey, stop sending my calls to that old phone, send them to this new one now?”

7

No problem, TexGuy!

I’m not really sure. I know that the pics are encoded as jpegs, so the receiving phone needs to be capable of displaying that type of file. I’d check with the literature- most phones that are capable of this really push the fact that you can send, receive, and display images.

Actually, it was just the camera I won on eBay- I already had the phone and service. But you’d really want to check this out with your service provider, as some providers only support certain phones or brands.

8

Why do I keep thinking of “…like a fish needs a bicycle.”

:smiley:

9

Oh god! My favourite subject!!!

Ok, a smartphone with cam is not in any way a substitute for a digital camera. They have the resolution of a webcam more or less, so you are talking about pics of 320x640 more or less.
That being said.

SO MUCH FUN! I took 100 pics this weekend with my phone on a trip up to the city. I watched Futurama episodes, read e-books, and played with my gameboy-emulator and C64-emulator with it on the way up. I also sent some emails and played some mud, and read my friends blogs. I took some videos of cows out the window of the car.

For people to be able to recieve the pic on their phone, they have to have a phone that is capable of recieving MMS (multimedia messaging service) messages. If they do not have one, they get a link to the web to look at it (with most providors). If their phone has a smaller screen, lower resolution etc, the image will suffer accordingly.

I would like to take this oppertunity to plug the Nokia 3650, it is what I have and what I love. I never leave the house without it now whereas before I was hard-pressed to bring my phone with me. It is so, so, so much fun, and I love, love, love it. I often leave my laptop at home and just go with it.

Here is a forum full of pics taken with the 3650
http://nokia3650.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=45

Just remember, most multifunction devices do a worse job than any dedicated device. This is not as good as a laptop, it is not as good as a dedicated mp3 player, it is not as good as a dedicated digicam, etc. It is however stunning, stunning as something that does all of that, and more in a unit that is the size of a pack of smokes. It is also a telephone.

10

This really gets to the heart of what my OP should have asked. I know the resolution is going to pale in comparison to a dedicated digital camera. I guess what I’m wanting to know is this: Do most people who own a camera phone consider the fun/cool factor to be worth the decrease in resolution?

If you’re scoring along with us at home, I’ve waffled both directions in the last 24 hours, and I’m now leaning toward keeping the Sony and saving up for a month or two and just buying the camera phone later. I think I might take enough digital pictures that it’s worth having the Sony, but I also think it would be really cool to have a camera on my phone so it’s always there…

and it would take drunk-dialing to a whole new level…

11

Having worked for a company that builds camera phones (not the Sprint models, but I’ve worked for Sprint PCS, so I know a lot, I suppose) and I have to say that I’d keep the digital camera and not worry about the phone at all.

12

Can you elaborate, Tuckerfan?

13

I’ve got a Nokia 7650 and I love it. The quality of the pics is pretty poor, but it’s a phone - whaddya expect? It’s pretty ugly, but it’s a camera - whaddya expect?

The Symbian operating system is pretty good too, only crashes occasionally, and it has a ton of functionality. Add a bluetooth USB dongle to your PC (~$30) for software downloads and uploads, and you’ve got a really useful PDA/browser/phone/SMS/games/bluetooth/modem/polyphonic/ sound recorder/handheld device.

E.g. I just installed Nokia’s video capture freeware today, and a new game too.

I’ve even dropped the damned thing in the sea, and it’s still working. Great phone.

14

Something else to bear in mind too…

:eek:

15

Jimm :slight_smile: isn’t it wonderful? The 3650 and the 7650 are very similar.

I get around that by not comparing them. It is like comparing one of those “fun size” polaroid shots to the pics you take with a SLR camera. One is a toy, one is a tool. I will be getting a proper digicam when my finances allow. The main plus of the phone-cam is that you have it with you at all times. You see something weird, funny, beautiful, you snap a pic. Also that you can then instantly send that pic by email, or upload it to your web-blog, or send it to a friends phone, makes it a much more “spur of the moment” sort of snapping. If you can afford it, go for both, otherwise work out if you want to have a tool for taking high quality images, or a toy that will provide you with entertainment on your lunch-break, on the bus, whereever you have 5 minutes to spare.

16

Well, it’s been a year since I worked for SPCS, and I don’t know what’s changed, but the camera phones they were going to be rolling out then required to you to switch to one of SPCS’s “digital plans” and there wasn’t any way for you to hook your phone to your PC and transfer the images that way (in most cases anyway, the really, really expensive phones could do it, but not the cheap ones), so you’d have to e-mail the images from your phone to your PC.

The company that I worked for which built the camera phones (not SPCS phones, BTW) had a pretty slipshod operation and in playing with the camera phones I found that they weren’t really user friendly. Despite what the commercials promised, you couldn’t simply point the thing and snap a pic on a whim. You had to piddle around with the menu and then you could snap your pic. Plus the displays weren’t all that clear, so you only had the vaguest idea of what the image would look like on a PC.

SPCS phones tend to have a clearer display than the ones that T-Mobile and AT&T have, but they’re still not nearly as good as a crappy PC monitor. Give 'em a couple of years, though, and they’ll have 'em at that point.

If you want pics of any quality, then keep the camera. If you’re just looking for an image which vaguely resembles the actual object, then a camera phone will work.