Mobile Phone Reviews

Archive for the ‘Camera Phones’ Category

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz features a smart new ergonomic body and HD video capabilities, both exciting new additions.  The 8.1 megapixel camera is a winner, and the 3.5 mm headphone jack sets it apart from most other Sony Ericsson mobile phones.

Pros

The strongest feature of the Vivaz is the extremely user friendly 8.1 megapixel camera.  There are dedicated buttons for video and stills, and on-screen icons and menus that clearly show the camera’s current settings and available options.  An 8 GB memory card is included in the produce packaging, as the HD video tends to use up a lot of internal memory.

Another strong aspect of the Vivaz is the addition of both a mini USB port and a 3.5 mm headphone jack.  The music player itself is intuitive and feature-rich – users can view album artwork and create instant playlists.

Other positive features include good video playback, convenient shortcuts to YouTube and iPlayer, a preloaded Facebook app, comfortable design, fine call quality, and a really sharp TFT screen. 

Cons

Like previous Sony Ericsson mobile phones, the Vivaz has a frustrating resistive touch-screen, though it’s admittedly one of the best of its kind.  There is a stylus but no QWERTY keyboard so messaging can be difficult.

Powering the Vivaz on and off is sluggish, and the camera is slow to load.  Locking and unlocking the screen presents a real challenge, as the lock button is also the power button; pushing too hard will turn off the phone. 

Conclusion

For recreational users, this is a fine smartphone.  Users looking for great camera features and media playback would be wise to check out the latest Vivaz mobile phone deals.

The Sony Ericsson Satio is a smartphone with a number of functions that will suit most users.  It has a black plastic casing which looks good and the screen has a lock switch which helps to prevent touch screens from appearing when you do not need them.  The touch screen is resistive which does not make for ease of use, and the small keyboard and pressure-sensitive screen occasionally make texting tiresome, although a stylus is supplied as an alternative.

The music functions on the Satio are excellent, with good sound quality and an easy to use interface.  However, there is no headphone jack but an adaptor is supplied. 

The phone has a 12-megapixel camera which produces good quality images, but has no optical zoom, though the shutter lag is not as evident as on other camera phones.  The flash also makes it easy to take photographs in poor light.   The phone also has a video function and the play back facility is clear on the excellent screen. 

The screen offers sharp images and different pages can be easily accessed from the home page.  Google Maps is pre-installed and the internet page offers instant links to news sites, social networking sites and entertainment sites.  Wi-Fi access is available and there are a number of applications which can be downloaded to make the phone easy to use. 

This smartphone is an excellent choice for those who are looking for their first phone that does more than text and make calls. 

Motorola joined forces with camera-giants Kodak to deliver a serious 5-megapixel shooter, to go head to head with Sony Ericsson and its Cyber-shot range.  The result was the Motorola MOTOZINE ZN5.

The ZN5 looks like any other average handset from the front but check around the back and the bulge tells you that this phone means business.  Underneath the lens is a 5-megapixel sensor, and although other phones have higher megapixel counts, this camera guarantees to produce better quality pictures because of Kodak’s secret clever processing.

When you open the lens, the menus are laid out in an organised manner making it easy to set up options like low light mode, white setting and flash settings.  The handset has a dedicated camera button and when you press it, you’ll notice very little shutter lag.

The camera comes with an inbuilt Xenon flash but because of the Kodak technology it takes great pictures in poor lighting even without the use of the flash.  The pictures look great on the ZN5’s screen but when you upload them to your computer, they don’t compare with a dedicated digital camera.  But compared to other phones, this handset is a cut above and easily rivals Sony Ericsson’s Cyber-shot range.

The ZN5’s menus make it easy to use other functions; the call quality is excellent and the battery life is good at over nine hours of talk time.  Another plus is that it has a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The let down of this phone is that although the camera is great, Motorola left off 3G support.

The HTC Legend is the successor to the HTC Hero and it is the first handset by HTC which has a ‘unibody’ casing made from aluminium.  The casing gives the phone a smooth sleek look and gives it a touch of class that a plastic phone does not have.  At the same time it manages to look simple. 

The handset has a 3.2 inch screen which gives a sharp image and responds well to the touchpad function; the trackball feature from the Hero has been replaced with an optical joystick.  It is an Android phone and has the Sense interface.  Sense offers a number of useful applications which give the user easy access to a lot of information, such as contact lists and weather forecasts.  Users can also easily customise the home page.

The HTC Legend makes social networking much easier with a feature called ‘friend stream’, making different networking sites easy to view.  The web browser also allows easy access to other internet sites and text from sites can be copied without difficulty.  The Legend also responds to the way the user is holding it and the screen will move from portrait to landscape modes when the phone is turned and the sensitive touch screen keypad makes mistyping less likely. 

The phone has a 5-megapixel camera though picture quality is not always great and occasionally the Wi-Fi reception is not very strong.  There are not as many Android applications as other operating systems have but new ones are being added all the time. 

The i8510 was launched late in 2008 and became the first 8-megapixel camera phone in Europe.  It is extremely similar to the Nokia N95, with almost identical features, and using the same Symbian operating system Series 60 user interface.  It also has the same Symbian problems – freezing/software errors and slow IU.  The battery life of the i8510 is also an issue and lets the phone down.

The phone’s camera is excellent as a dedicated camera, which is not surprising from one of the world’s leaders in digital camera design and manufacturing.  A dedicated button activates the camera, opens the lens and toggles between video and camera.  For the serious photographer there are enhanced options such as panorama for landscape shots, smile and blink detection and auto focus.

The i8510 has a 9x digital zoom but no optical zoom and a dual power LED flash.  The flash is only really good at close range and doesn’t quite come up to the standard of the Sony Ericsson K850i that comes with a bright xenon flash.  The video is of equal high quality and can be replayed in slow motion as it records at 120 frames per second.

The phone is a heavier phone than others and this may put buyers off.  It’s also quite large but this means that it has a large LCD screen – 2.8 inches, displaying 16 million colours.

The phone comes with a good music player that supports standard formats and an FM radio.

The Samsung i8510 Innov8 is great for accessing the internet and also has an A-GPS satellite navigation feature.

Anyone looking for a camera phone that could stand in as a very good replacement for their digital camera only needs to look as far as the Nokia N86, which benefits from Nokia’s exceptional camera phone experience, all put together in this model.

When Nokia talks camera phone with the N86, it’s not kidding, The camera is a whopping eight megapixels, and the Carl Zeiss wide angle lens ensures crystal clear pictures, good enough to please the most discerning eye. The digital zoom works well here, thanks to the high picture resolution. Unfortunately, you have to go through menus to reach the camera, rather than just using the shutter button, which makes everything more fiddly than it really needed to be.

Users can readily upload finished pictures to Flickr (and movies to YouTube), but it’s a shame that there’s no easy upload to Facebook. However, viewing pictures on the phone’s screen is a delight, even though it’s not too generous at just 2.6”.

On the downside, the direction pad isn’t too easy to use, but a well-spaced, responsive keypad more than makes up for it. With GPS built in and 3G, it offers more than just pictures, and the 3.5mm headphone jack allows users to employ their own headphones for listening.

The Nokia N86 does a lot of things well, but it does pictures superbly – simply one of the very best camera phones on the market. It should be among the top choices for anyone seriously considering replacing their digital camera with a camera phone.