FOR SOME REASON, the Japanese really love to take photographs. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But I've never had the sense that Americans were quite so snap-happy. So it followed that we'd be much less interested in wireless digital photography than our Japanese friends. I still believe this--but my recent experience has forced me to question it a bit.
The nice people at Sprint PCS knew I didn't really believe in their whole digital Vision-thing, especially the photography component. So they recently surprised me with a Samsung phone and the digital camera that attaches to it.
The camera--smaller than the mouse you're probably using at your PC--is minimalist to the extreme: It includes a lens, viewfinder, on-off switch, LCD to indicate how many shots remain, and a cable to connect the cam to the phone when you're ready to do something with the pictures.
The camera has no flash. It shoots only VGA-quality images (640x480 pixels), which won't make good hard copies any larger than a small snapshot--after all, they only have about 300,000 pixels to play with. By contrast, a good consumer camera, capable of making a film-quality 8x10 print, has 5 or 6 million pixels.
HAVING SAID THAT, the Samsung pics look pretty good on screen, making them perfect for e-mail or even for business applications that don't require high-resolution images. A picture I took indoors, next to a bright window, looked fine when I e-mailed it to myself.
Anything for which you'd use a disposable film camera, you could use one of these camera-phones to do the same thing. I wouldn't use one of these for my vacation pics, for example. But I would use one for quick, fun pictures that I'd send to friends. I'd also use it to document something when I didn't have another camera or when I needed to immediately send the image to someone else.
Insurance companies, for example, are already using these cameras to document accident damage. Attach the photos to the digital copies of the paperwork and you have a complete file, without having to deal with the Polaroids they've previously used.
Likewise, real estate people are using the cameras to shoot pics for their MLS listings. Having just bought a house, I wouldn't recommend this--the photos aren't quite good enough, especially for inside shots. But fixing this problem is just a matter of time.
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One Siemens GSM phone combines Bluetooth, wireless headset, and--oh, yeah--a camera, too. AnchorDesk's Pat Houston checks it out.
 Watch now
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ALREADY, Sprint has largely replaced the Samsung A500 I'm using with two Sanyo phones: The SCP-8100 is the model Sprint has been advertising on TV and selling for $99; The SCP-5300, with flash, sells for $299.
Later this summer, Sprint will begin offering a Pocket PC device from Hitachi, with keyboard, wireless voice/data, and built-in cam. It's easy to imagine vertical applications that would send a photo and data collected in a form on the PDA directly to a server for processing at the office. For the really high-end, Ricoh offers a digital camera that accepts Sprint's PCS Connection card and sends the photo that way.
Sprint isn't the only wireless carrier getting into digital photography. But it is promoting it the most and offers a flat rate for data connections: Unlimited use of the PCS Vision data network, for handsets, is only $10 a month. Digital photography features, using the LightSurf technology created by my friend Philippe Kahn, is an additional $5 a month for unlimited use.
So for $15 a month, on top of your voice plan, Sprint gives you unlimited Web browsing from your handset (not a connected PC) and unlimited digital photography, which can be easily shared handset-to-handset with other Sprint PCS Vision customers and via e-mail with anyone else. Not a bad deal if you're prone to such things.
STILL, this technology has its limitations. A 640x480 image takes 10 to 20 seconds to transmit from the phone. If you try to send too many at once, you may have to resend some of them when the cellular connection burps and throws you offline. Not a big deal, but it points out the limiting factor created by the relatively slow data connections now possible. Sending a 3-megapixel image might well take forever, or 10 minutes, whichever came first.
Sending so much data would, right now, seem to break the economic model that allows Sprint to offer the all-you-can-eat pricing. Today's low-res camphones seem to mesh nicely with the existing low-bandwidth networks. As affordable bandwidth increases, we'll see photo resolution keep pace.
I don't think camphones are completely ready for business use, since I don't think most businesses want to shoot such low-res images. On the other hand, if all you need is a picture that sorta-kinda shows what you're looking at and is easy to transmit and store, then these gadgets might work for you.
That said, I'm warming to the idea of having a camphone in my pocket for all those photos that I wouldn't ordinarily shoot, either because I don't have a camera with me, or because only with a camphone could I immediately send them wirelessly to another handset or via e-mail.
So I am not yet a real believer in camphones. But I am in the infatuation stage. Let's see how long it lasts.
What do you think? Does your phone have a camera in it? Do you use it? TalkBack to me!
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Our favorite phones
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Two of ZDNet's top three phones have cameras built-in; it's an option on the third.
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