Camera Phone News & Info

Camera-Phone Sales Soar

That competition includes Motorola (NYSE: MOT - news), Ericsson (news - web sites) (Nasdaq: ERICY - news) Mobile Platforms and, more recently, chip giant Intel (Nasdaq: INTC - news) -- all of which want to take advantage of new wireless networks and an increased need for data processing.

Camera phones, initially launched in Japan a few years back, have drawn a huge following in Asia and are expected to do the same in the near future in Europe and North America. As the technology gets cheaper, digital cameras will be an expected feature on mobile phones, IDC analyst Alex Slawsby told NewsFactor, much as color screens are now.

IDC reports that from 2002 to 2003, camera phone sales doubled to 40 million from 20 million units shipped. That year-to-year growth is expected to continue in the next two years.

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Consumer Reports Rates Camera Cell Phones

(AUGUST 8th, 2003, 2:30 p.m.) -- Cell phone companies and their service providers have a real marketing blitz going to promote camera cell phones. Consumer Reports recently checked them out.

In the ads for the camera-equipped cell phones, the pictures always look great and seem easy to send. But Consumer Reports says that's not exactly how it works in real life. Chris Bucsko recently tested five of the camera cell phones and their service providers -- T-Mobile AT&T, Cingular and Sprint.

All the phones let you take pictures and store them on the phone and you can send the pictures to any e-mail address. You can also send pictures to another camera phone, but only if it has the same service provider.

And while the ads make the pictures look great, that seems a little misleading. While they look OK on the tiny phone display, when Bucsko enlarged the photos even slightly on a computer, they weren't clear anymore.

Another drawback -- sending pictures to an e-mail address can be tricky. "All of the service providers but Sprint sent the e-mail with a phone number instead of a name as the return address."

And spam filters can block e-mail addresses that consist of numbers. Still, if a camera cell phone suits your needs, Consumer Reports says your best bet is the Sanyo SCP-8100 phone with Sprint service. Its streamlined design makes it the easiest to use.