Camera Phones

Adding a digital camera to a cellular phone is a really good idea. As the saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words”. It can be used to send a picture of the office building you�re meeting a colleague at, the restaurant where you’re meeting your friends, or anything else that you find interesting. In fact there is even a new trend known as a moblog where people upload their pictures to websites and share with others.

However there are two limitations with cameras phones that you should be aware of. The first is the picture quality. If you’ve ever bought a digital camera you know one of the more important factors to look at is megapixels. Basically this tells you how much “data” your picture can hold. As a rule of thumb the more mega pixels the better. Most basic to intermediate level camera phones are in the 1 to 1.5 megapixel range. However megapixels are only half of the equation. The other half is lens quality. If you look at a 1 megapixel camera and compare the lens in both size and quality to that of your standard camera phone the difference will be obvious. Secondly most cameras only take �small� pictures are far as pixels go. Generally they will be about 640 pixels wide compared to over 2000 pixels wide for a standard digital camera. Lastly camera phones only take pictures at 72 DPI whereas digital cameras are usually in 300 DPI range. What does all of this mean? If you were looking to get a camera phone in order to avoid buying a digital camera, you�re not going to be able to. The technology to do that economically just doesn�t exist yet. However you will be fine sharing pictures or posting them on a webpage.

The second part you need to consider is how you will get the pictures off of the cellular phone. If you have data or USB port on your phone you will need to purchase a data cable to allow your phone to interface with your computer or other device. If your phone doesn’t have this ability you will need to send the pictures to your email address. In addition to the airtime charges, any carriers have an additional data rate charge. If you plan on sending lots of pictures this could become fairly expensive.

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