Camera Phones » Camera Phone Technology

Nokia N8 Review

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 11:00:55 +0000

If you were just to compare specifications, the Nokia N8 is a mobile phone that should propel the N Series from Nokia to the top of the camera phone charts. Lets review those features and take a look at what the Nokia N8 has in store.

With a 12 megapixel camera and optics from Carl Zeiss, including a wide-angle lens and the ability to shoot in high-definition video (720p resolution) and connect via HDMI to your home theatre system with Dolby Digital Plus sound, the Nokia N8 looks to take multimedia phones to a new level.

If social networking is your thing, the Nokia N8 brings all of your favourite networking sites together, including Facebook and Twitter, straight to your home screen. Upload your photos and videos to Facebook as soon as you capture them on the phone, and keep in touch with your friends direct from your mobile.

Building on the succesful Widgets which made their debut in the N97 you can personalise your N8 to your hearts content. There are three individual home screens so your phone can look different when used at work, at home and one spare.

With the growth of the OVI resource portal, there are a large number of different applications that you can get to upgrade and improve your Nokia phone and although not at the level that iPhone users can expect this resource is becoming a valuable addition for Nokia owners.

In addition to the high-quality camera and video expect to find 16 GB of internal memmory which can be expanded through micro-SD memory cards (up to a total of 32 GB) making a total possible memory of 48 GB. Llike television on your mobile? The Nokia N8 also includes on demand WebTV including channels from CNN and National Geographic, although not live TV, a feature hastily dropped by Nokia after the N96 because of the lack of support around the world. This adds an additional distraction from those long commutes as does the full featured music player including album art, playlists and the boast from Nokia that the N8 will store enough songs that you could listen to over two days worth of music without hearing the same song twice.

Connectivity includes Bluetooth, HDMI, a micro-USB connector, 3.5 mm AV connector for your headphones, FM radio and an FM transmitter. E-mail messaging is supported as you would expect as is browsing and internet capabilities which include Flash video support.

The user interface relies on a 3.5 inch high resolution screen with 16.7 million colours and 640 x 360 pixels OLED capacitive touch screen. Differing from the N97, the touch screen is capacitive rather than resistive which means it should be easier to operate with just a finger thater than a stylus. There is an accelerometer (orientation sensor), compass and an ambient light sensor, all the things you’d expect from a high range N Series mobile phone.

GPS is included with integrated GPS and A-GPS receiver and OVI Maps with free car and pedestrian navigation will be included.

The Noki N8 is also expected to ship with the new Symbian ^3 operating system which is still yet to be fully released by Nokia. Given the number of partners involved in the Symbian development system we would hope that this new release brings a lot of new features and stability to this rather old OS.

Sony Ericsson Aino – 8.1 Megapixel Cameraphone

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:19:00 +0000

Although the Sony Ericsson Satio is a phone where the specifications for the camera really shine through, the Sony Ericsson Aino still has impressive camera features not least the 8.1 megapixel resolution, with auto focus, flash and 16 x digital zoom.

There is touch focus through the main touch screen, face recognition and photo fix to enhance your photos.

There are additional sound features including Clear Bass and Stereo features to enhanced the quality of music through the bundled music player, and there is compatibility with A2DP Bluetooth headsets.

The PlayNow film, music and games download service is also included.

Other features include the slide out keypad, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS with Google Maps and full email support. The full colour touch screen has 432×240 pixels and incorporates auto rotate and animated wallpapers and for gamers there are dedicated gaming keys as well as the ability to connect remotely to your PSP 3. There is 55 MB on board memory which can be expanded with MicroSD memory cards.

Although slightly heavier than the Satio, The Sony Ericsson Aino is about 10% smaller in overall dimensions at 104.0 x 50.0 x 15.5 mm and has an estimated eight and a half hours talk time (300 hours standby).

Samsung i7410 | Camera Phone with pico projector

admin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:41:49 +0000

At Camera phone review we first reported the possibility of pico projectors, small enough to fit inside your mobile phone back in July 2007.

Now it looks like they are becoming a reality with specialist electronics companies such as Texas Instruments now producing the technology on a commercial basis and with consumer products now available from Samsung and Nikon. Nikon have incorporated the device into a digital camera, the Coolpix S1000pj and Samsung included a projector in the W7900 smart phone launched for the South Korean market (expected to be badged as the Samsung i7410 in Europe).

Part of the problem to date has been managing the power requirements of the projector, to maintain overall battery life on the mobile phone, but with consumers unwilling to carry an additional piece of hardware around with them this is a hurdle that needs to be overcome if the technology is to go mass market. If projectors in camera phones was to expand as cameras in mobiles have done, the potential market is quoted as growing to 1 billion pico projectors a year by 2015.

Texas Instruments, whose DLP or Digital Light Processing technology is within the Samsung i7410 are optimistic about the prospects but they are not the only company in the marketplace. One thing is sure, that if this takes off, those people who love to have loud annoying conversations on their mobiles in public places (think train carriage) will now be able to inflict their choice of movie on to their unfortunate passengers as well

Sony Ericsson Satio – 12 megapixel cameraphone

admin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:40:29 +0000

Camera phones generally seem to have been stuck in their ways recently, with resolutions on the most popular ranges stuck well below that of dedicated digital cameras.

Now with the release of the Satio camera phone from Sony Ericsson, a phone originally rumoured in February, there is a mainstream camera phone that has a huge 12.1 megapixel resolution, with the features you would expect in a digital camera. Unlike the Samsung SCH-W880, another 12 megapixel cameraphone recently announced, the Satio comes fully loaded with the functionality you would expect on a smart phone as well.

The 3.5″, 16:9 ratio (that’s wide screen!) touch screen provides the main viewfinder for the camera; there is auto focus, 16 x digital zoom, and a xenon flash built in, but in addition, Sony Ericsson have included image stabilisation to reduce the camera wobble, geo tagging so that you can identify where your picture was taken using the built in GPS, red eye reduction and image fix to enhance your photos.

In addition to face recognition there is a smile detection feature that will let the camera take the shot when your subject smiles! There is also a multi shot capability called BestPic, that will take 9 shots in a second, allowing you to then choose the best picture, great for moving pictures.

There is video capture and playback functionality, a radio, WiFi, Bluetooth and aGPS with map technology from Google maps.

The Sony Ericsson Satio is built around the Symbian operating system and includes a lot of the features that you will find on other Symbian phones, including the email platforms and Exchange mail options that are particularly important for business users.

The touch screen includes handwriting recognition and there is a document reader and editor included as well as an alarm clock, calculator and phone book. There is built in auto rotate – tilt the phone and the screen changes from landscape to picture and vice-a-versa. Silence an alarm or a call wit a wave of your hand over the camera lens.

When you want to relax, the Satio includes unlimited access to the “playnow arena” that will let you download and watch a variety of films for free or use the music player to listen to songs stored on the phone.

Available in three colours – red, black or silver, the Sony Ericsson Satio offers a feature packed camera phone.

How to destroy the Indestructible Mobile Phone?

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:29:31 +0000

Following the release of the Motorola Barrage ‘indestructible mobile phone‘ it got the Camera Phone Review team wondering how indesructable is indestrucitble?

Obviously if you take a hammer to a mobile, or any electronic device, it is likely to fall apart quite quickly, certainly to stop working, but what if your mobile does break? Obviously there are the immediate problems of replacing your phone and getting the contacts information (you did back it up, didn’t you?) onto your new phone.

But what then – it is unlikely to be worth very much if it is broken, although you could possibly get something for it as spare parts, but there is still your private data on the memory. Just because you can’t get it does not mean someone else can’t.

So should you smash your mobile to make sure the data is gone for good? It will all depend on what you may have stored on there and how broken your device is – a broken screen may make the phone useless to you but perfectly accessable to someone who goes to the trouble of replacing the screen.

There are some mobile antivirus products that will let you remotely wipe data by sending an SMS to your phone. If you have such a product installed that might work. And the new Windows Mobile 6.5 also has a back up and a delete function that will allow you to wipe files from your mobile clearing the storage before you pass it on to someone else – but the phone does need to be working for these to work.

In summary what you do with your phone will depend on the data you have on your mobile and how damaged it is, but if nothing else, make sure you back up your data regularly, so you can get access to it, if something terrible should happen.

Windows Mobile 6.5 Launches

admin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:17:12 +0000

Microsoft have released an updated version of the windows mobile platform, cunningly known as Windows Mobile 6.5.

Revolving around the familiar applications that you will see on your pc, including mobile versions of the Microsoft Office suite, and Internet Explorer, Microsoft hope that this release will help windows powered obiles claw back ground lost to Apple and the iPhone.

Another important feature is the integration of Outlook email, something that Blackberry have brought to the fore in any business mobile selection process.

Toshiba TG01 with Windows Mobile 6.5

The MyPhone feature allows free backup of your Windows Mobile device to the MyPhone website, and apeing Apple, there is an App like download store to get additional applications and widgets for your phone.

So where can you get Windows Mobile 6.5?

There are a range of new mobiles launching immediately with 6.5, including:

HTC Touch 2, LG GM750

Samsung Omnia Lite B7300

Samsung Omnia Pro B7610

Samsung Omnia II

and the Toshiba TG01, with a 1GHz processor the most powerful Windows Mobile device to date.

HTC Hero

admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:54:11 +0000

HTC are making a name for themselves by standing slightly aside from the crowd of other mobile manufacturers and the HTC Hero is a feature packed phone with a 5 megapixel phone. Receiving a whopping 9.9 out of 10 in the Freak Score at TestFreaks.co.uk, we felt it needed further investigation.

The first point to note is that the HTC Hero runs on Google’s Android mobile operating system, so for devout Symbian or Window Mobile lovers, there will be a step away from the familiar, but do not let that put you off. As with other products from Google, Android is a strong performer.

The HTC Hero has a 3.2” TFT-LCD touch sensitive screen with 320×480 pixels set into a case with a slight lip at the bottom. From the touch screen you can access most of the phone’s features, and there are four buttons and a trackball set below the screen to allow calls to be answered and ended, to access menus.

The great customisation features of the HTC Hero mean that you can change the display as you want and add elements or remove them as you want. Other features include a GPS receiver and digital compass, 3.5mm audio jack, 288MB RAM and a microSD card slot to expand the memory, Bluetooth and WiFi.

Getting to the picture taking element, there is a 5 megapixel camera with the lens slightly recessed into the case, and it has auto focus and a digital zoom. There is a significant omission however and that is because HTC have not included a flash in the Hero. Possibly this shows that HTC have focused their efforts on other features with this phone, as evidenced by the lack of flash, because the picture quality is slightly disappointing, but if you are looking for an everyday camera, you should still consider the HTC Hero because of the other features and packages now available.

N97 Mini – Does size matter?

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:36:32 +0000

The Nokia N97 mini is one of those badly kept secrets that seems to haunt technology releases. Within days of the N97 launch, rumors of a smaller, cheaper N97 were abounding, eminating from a post by a support technician on the Vodafone Ireland forums. Although this was rapidly deleted, it was not before the leak had made it out into the wider internet world.

Nokia finally released details at their Nokia World 2009 conference in September, and the N97 mini should be with us in Q4 2009.

So what is different from it’s bigger, older brother?

Well, the N97 Mini is certainly smaller, at 113 x 52.5 x 14.2 mm, compared with the N97 117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 mm. It is also about 12 g lighter at 138 g.

There is less storage memory – only 8 GB compared with 32 GB on the N97, but this can be expanded with 16 GB micro SD cards, so you should still have plenty of room for music and pictures.

But apart from that the features are similar. – First there is still the 5 mega pixel camera with auto focus, dual LED flash, and VGA video to 30 frames per second.

Then there is a full QWERTY keyboard, albeit slightly smaller and without the D that is present on the left hand side of the N97. The screen on the N97 mini still slides out and tilts as it does on the N97. GPS with Ovi maps including turn by turn directions and Bluetooth are built in and there is Wi-Fi connectivity.

There is still a bright, 640 x 360 pixel, touch sensitive TFT screen with 16 million colours, although at 3.2″ it is slightly smaller than that on the N97, to fit into the smaller case.

Even though the battery is smaller (1200 mAh compared with 1500 mAH on the N97), the music player will provide up to 28 hours music playback (although this is in the offline mode). Talk time and standby times are reduced, but still provide up to 240 min and 310 hours respectively (in 3G, longer for GSM).

So should you get the Nokia N97 Mini or opt for the full version? Well the mini is about 14% cheaper, so there is not a great financial saving, but if the size of the device is important, and you do not need the full 32GB storage, then the Nokia N97 mini may be the right choice for you.

Samsung Jet

admin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:03:06 +0000

The Samsung Jet is the latest touch screen mobile from Samsung, who claim that it is the fastest full touch screen phone on the market today.

Whilst touch screen mobiles are now common place, manufacturers are all trying to put their own slant on how the technology is implemented, with features and usability varying greatly.

The Samsung Jet is a nice compact handset at 108.8 X 53.5 X 11.9 mm and weighing in at 110 grams. Into this is packed a 800MHz processor and â€˜brighter than lifeâ€™ AMOLED 16M colour screen. The screen is 3.1â€ WVGS, high resolution and powered by the Samsung TouchWiz interface. This provides bright, clear colours, with a screen that can be viewed from any angle. Because the AMOLED screen does not use a backlight, the battery life is also improved, with the screen using up to 66% less energy than older technology.

The 800 MHz processor allows improved web browsing and the ability to view up to 5 web pages at one time with the Dolfin web browser software, which also has single finger zoom, so you can control the Samsung Jet with one hand.
Camera technology includes a 5 megapixel camera, with dual LED flash, DivX and XviD for video viewing, auto focus and blink detection.

As you would expect, there is a music player built in, with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack and an FM radio and texting is easy with a full QWERTY keyboard on the touch screen, and a built in GPS receiver and integrated Google Maps.

The Samsung Jet promises speed and high resolution graphics, with all the features you would expect from a top end Smartphone. Because of this the Samsung Jet should be on your list of phones to look at when considering a new mobile.

New 8 Megapixel Samsung Pixon camera phone

admin — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:30:36 +0000

Hot on the heels of their INNOV8 i8510, Samsung have announced the Pixon M8800 8 megapixel camera, that is only 13.8 mm thick.

The Pixon is a touchscreen phone with a 240 x 400 TFT LCD screen. The camera has a 16x digital zoom and includes auto-focus, face detection as well as geo-tagging, and there is a dedicated photo browser to view and share pictures.

There is only 200MB of internal memory – not great compared with other top spec phones – but you can add more with the micro SD card – upto 16GB, which should allow for lots of pictures.

The Pixon is expected in the UK from 1 November.

The expected specifications are:

Network: GSM/GPRS/ EDGE Quad Band (850/ 900/1800/1900 MHz)

HSDPA 7.2 Mbps (2100 MHz)

Display: 3.2â€³ 240Ã—400 262K WQVGA TFT LCD

Camera: 8-megapixel camera with Auto focus

Dual Power LED Flash

ASR (Advanced Shake Reduction)

Face Detection, Smile Shot, Face Link (face tagging), Geo-tagging, Auto Panorama Shot, Photo memo

Photo Browser (Accelerometer Sensor, Tilt and flip, Sorting by Face/Time/Color/Folder)

Video recording & playing (MPEG4, WMV, DivX, XviD)

30 fps D1 (720 x 480) & 120 fps(QGVA) high quality video recording

SRS (Surround Sound System) Virtual 5.1CH

Music Player (MP3, AAC, e-AAC+, e-AAC+, WMA)

FM Radio with RDS

DNSe (Digital Natural Sound engine)

Bluetooth v.2.0 / USB 2.0 HS

TV Out connection

Internal Memory: 200MB External Memory: Micro SD

Size: 107.9 x 54.6 x 13.8 mm, 121g

Battery: 1000 mAh

Talk time: 3h 40min

Standby time: 290h