One of the main things that I have mentioned in my How the World Should Be article is how I would like to see a decent phone that can replace my current phone, camera and mp3 player.
Camera phones have been around now for over five years. The first one I saw was around three years ago and the picture quality was absolutely terrible. Now three years later picture quality is still absolutely terrible. The number of megapixels may have increased by about 3 times but the camera lenses are no way near good enough to give the level of detail that 2 million pixels can provide. You just need to compare a photo taken with my three year old 2mp digital camera with one of today’s 2mp camera phone to see just what a waste camera phones are.
However compare my camera with one of today’s within the same price range and you’ll find the number of megapixels has tripled and the size reduced about four times (eg).
Now let’s have a look at what’s round the corner for camera and phone technology. In 2004 Samsung annouced they’d produced the SPH-S2300 with 3.2 megapixels, 3x optical zoom and xenon flash. Great I thought – this is the direction we need to be heading. But since then I heard nothing. These devices seemed to be more proof of concept than viable consumer products.
Then just last month Sony annouced their slightly more visually appealing K800.
This phone has more or less the same specs as the 2004 Samsung but with a pretty amazing 350 hours of standby battery life. Even better I thought, just what I want. But what about my music?
Now along come Samsung once again. On the 6th of this month we heard about their SGH-i310 which claims to have and 8gb microdrive for storing pictures and music. Brilliant, I could just about squeeze my music collection on to that I think. But what about my pictures? This phone has just a 2mp camera and no doubt a tiny crappy lens. Well we can’t have it all I guess.
Three days later I heard about Samsung’s SCH-B600 which sports an amazing 10mp camera with 3x optical zoom and a decent flash.
Samsung are obviously on the ball at the moment. They are also one of the world’s largest suppliers of flash memory and are continually producing bigger and cheaper chips. It’s clear they can see the demand for high capacity mp3 playing phones and decent quality camera phones. One thing I hope they don’t overlook is battery life. Probably the best thing about my 2 year old Nokia 8310 is that the battery lasts about 5 times longer than modern phones’.
So we’re not quite there but hopefully some time soon we’ll see a 20gb, 10mp, 3x optical zoom, flash based phone with enough battery to last for 350 hours on standby and at least 20 hours listening to music. The last thing you’d want is to be unable to make a call because your phone died after a long train journey.