Posts filed under Camera Phones
NEC announces world’s slimmest folding camera phone
February 9th, 2006
NEC are to display the world’s thinnest folding camera phones, the NEC N412i and N500iS, and a new HSDPA prototype phone, at next week’s 3GSM conference. The NEC N412i and N500iS are both 2.5G, with EDGE support, enabling data transfer speeds fast enough to cope with real time video streaming. They also come with MP3 players, and “large” memory. The NEC N412i is also known as the L1 in some countries, and is only 11.9mm thick. The N500iS is the successor to the N412i, and offers iMode support. No details yet on how slim it actually is, though.
Apparently, NEC intend to have a large presence at 3GSM, which is great news for those of us keen to see what’s coming this year in mobile phone land.
More details and pictures of the new NEC phones after the jump.
[Source: NEC, Slashphone]
Posted in Camera Phones, HSDPA, Japanese Phones, NEC, Phones, Prototypes, Technology | 
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New Pantech multimedia phone – PMP my phone
January 26th, 2006
Pantech have released a new multimedia mobile phone, called the Pantech IM-U100. According to Pantech, the new Korean phone is designed to provide users with a “world class Portable Multimedia Player (PMP) phone, incorporating MP3 player, camera and movie functions.” So what makes it world class, when every other phone out there offers similar features? Screen size, that’s what. The IM-U100 boasts a 2.6 inch wide TFT screen, with an aspect ratio of 15:9 (normal phones have an aspect ratio of 4:3).
Pantech are pitching the phone firmly at the PMP market, and its features clearly reflect that. Better still, although only available in Korea at the moment, Pantech man Ji-Bong Ryoo has said “We are confident that users in Korea and, eventually, overseas will appreciate the world class PMP functionality of the new IM-U100”. So for a change, this new Korean phone will find its way outside of Korea – hurrah for Pantech!
More pictures and features of the Pantech IM-U100 PMP phone after the jump.
[Source: Pantech]
Twisting Hitachi W41H mobile TV phone
January 26th, 2006
Hitachi have released the new Hitachi W41H mobile TV phone. This tasty piece of mobile mentalism (forgive the pun!) is, as you can see, a mobile TV phone. Better yet, you can watch nearly four hours of TV on its 2.7 inch screen, and even record 30 minutes’ worth for later viewing. Music’s catered for with a built-in MP3 player, as well as support for Japanese network operator au’s LISMO service (a mobile iTunes-type service). Naturally, it’s a cameraphone too, and being Japanese, it sports a nifty 2 megapixel camera. Best of all, though, is the twisty form factor. It may look like an oversized candy-bar, but read on to see the shapes the Hitachi W41H mobile TV phone can pull.
[Source: Gizmodo, PhoneyWorld]
Samsung SCH-B500 7.7 megapixel camera TV phone lays down technology gauntlet
January 25th, 2006
This is the soon-to-be-announced Samsung SCH-B500 camera TV phone. Yes that’s right: not digital camera, but a camera TV phone. All 7.7 megapixels of it. This stunning piece of technological gadgetry knocks most digital cameras out of the water, let alone cameraphones. What’s even more impressive is its range of other features. You want mobile TV on your gigantic cameraphone? You got it. MP3 player and TV-Out? Why not. Super huge screen for watching mobile TV? Oh go on then! This leviathan of a phone is simply staggering, and lays down the technology gauntlet to all other mobile phone manufacturers. Is says quite simply (but also quite loudly): “call that a cameraphone?”
More pics and details of the Samsung SCH-B500 camera TV phone after the jump.
New Samsung SCH-B330 Mobile TV phone released
January 25th, 2006
Samsung have announced the launch of their new SCH-B330 mobile TV phone. They originally announced the new mobile phone just before Christmas, together with two other mobile TV phones, the Samsung SCH-B300 and SCH-B360. It was the B300 that got all the press at the time, though, because of its interesting ‘crossbar’ design.
However, the new B330 has the better specs:
- CDMA2000
- 3MP camera
- video recording
- DMB TV reception
- TV-output
- TFT LCD display (QVGA)
- landscape view
- MP3 audio playback
- EV-DO
- Bluetooth
- IrDA
- PictBridge wireless printing
- microSD memory card storage.
Unfortunately, it’s a new Korean phone only, and is unlikely to be released outside of Korea any time soon (damn!). It’ll cost the equivalent of $700 or so – or about $300 less than my S700i cost (without contract) in the UK a year ago. Gotta love progress!
[Source: SamsungHQ]
Project-a-phone Borg-like mobile phone projection unit
January 21st, 2006
As mobile phone cameras become increasingly sophisticated, the images you store on them will soon start to challenge the quality of stand-alone digital cameras. Samsung already have an 8 megapixel camera for the Korean market, NTT have auto-stabilization software for their Japanese phones, and even Europeans can expect 3 megapixels this year with the new Nokias and Sony Ericssons (not sure about you guys in the US, as your phones seem to be dependent on a mobile operator picking them up). But what do you do with these super-sharp new images? Keep them in your mobile phone, displaying them on a tiny 2.4 inch QVGA screen? Is that any way to treat an 8 megapixel image!? The people behind the Project-a-Phone clearly think not.
They want you to strap your innocent mobile phone into the Project-a-Phone Borg-assimilating torture frame, connect the frame to your PC, and you too can carry out gruesome mobile phone torture experiments project your phone’s display onto your PC monitor. Readers across Europe familiar with The Carphone Warehouse’s (and their affilliates’) cute Mowbli character (left), just picture him here, sat in this contraption. Resistance is indeed futile!
Take perfect pictures with NTT’s new N902i camera phone
January 19th, 2006
NTT have just launched the amazing new NTT N902i camera phone in Japan. It’s amazing, not because of the enormous megapixellage of the phone (leave that to Samsung, who are up to 8 megapixels and counting!), but the way in which it actively prevents shaken photo syndrome.
Anyone who’s ever used a camrea-phone knows how absolutely still you must be to avoid blurring the picture. What NTT’s N902i does it to take a series of photos in quick succession, and then produce a composite photo with all the blurriness computed out. The result, apparently, is an ultra-clear image. Expect to see this technology on many future camera phones, real soon.
Alternatively, of course, you could just save your cash and use MobileMentalism’s handy guide on how to take good pictures with your camera phone (OK, shameless plug, but go on, read it, it really is useful!)
New Nokia 6125 mobile phone launched, sets new benchmark for mid-range phones
January 16th, 2006
Nokia have launched a new mobile phone, the Nokia 6125. The new phone looks quite stylish, but what really marks it out is the set of features it comes with given that it’s a mid-range phone.
The Nokia 6125 comes fully-equipped with:
- 1.3 megapixel camera
- MP3 player
- FM radio
- Quadband GSM
- Bluetooth
- Macromedia Flash
- Infrared
- USB
- MMS
- Instant Messaging
- Push To Talk
- How swappable microSD memory card
In other words, every gadget you would expect on a high end phone. Mobile phones have come with some of these features before, of course, but either the features would be compromised (e.g. VGA camera as opposed to a more usable 1.3 megapixel one), or you wouldn’t get the full set of features (e.g. top end camera, no email client). What Nokia has done is defined a feature set of all the most useful features, compromised on none of them, and used the set as the baseline for its mid-range models, not its high-end ones. The benchmark has been raised again, and mobile phone features have moved away from being gimmicks to become practical and truly useful.
[Source: Nokia]
More details and pictures of the new Nokia 6125 mobile phone after the jump.
Samsung announces 8 megapixel cameraphone
January 12th, 2006
CES 2006 certainly had its share of new mobile phone announcements, but none of the new mobiles on show matched the current top of the line Korean phones that Samsung and LG have been selling for over a year now. While in Europe and the US we have to make do with the 2 megapixel models from Nokia and Sony Ericsson, in Korea, both mobile phone giants have 5 megapixel camera phones on sale, and have sold more than 300,000 of them between them. Samsung even has a 7 megapixel cameraphone model, the Samsung V770!
However, given that even smaller mobile phone manufacturers, such as Pantech and Gigabyte, have also released 5 megapixel cameraphones in Korea, Samsung clearly feel the need to raise the stakes. They’ve recently announced an 8 megapixel camera phone (Korea only of course), the Samsung SPH-V8200 ! Kind of makes CES 2006 look more like CES 1999! In fact, if it wasn’t for Samsung’s huge array of new phone announcements (25 models at the last count), CES 2006 would have been very poor for mobile phone gadgetry. Not a vintage year, it would seem.
[Source: MobileMag, MobileKorea]
CES 2006: Nokia VP predicts future mobile phone trends
January 6th, 2006
Nokia’s North American VP Tim Eckersley has a few interesting things to say about the future of mobile trends over at Reuters. In a 5 minute video clip, he shows off the Nokia N770 Internet tablet, which is selling in droves, and talks about the latest trends that Nokia see appearing in the next year or so. Specifically, he cites convergence and multimedia as the overarching themes, and says that convergence is being driven by music. Hang on, is this last year’s trend he’s predicting or this?!
He also goes on to say that imaging is starting to take over as the driver of sales, with camera phones ramping up to the 5 megapixel level (which was last year’s entry level model for South Korean models!), and that there will be greater integration with external accessories such as printers for more seamless transport of your images.
So, he doesn’t reveal much, and he certainly doesn’t explain why Nokia’s been so quiet, but you at least get a feel for what it’s like at CES 2006 right now.
[Source: Reuters]
Posted in CES 2006, Camera Phones, Events, Mobile Music, Mobile Phone Trends, News, Technology |
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