Introduction
A year's truce must've been enough and some heavyweight sharpshooters are called to arms again. In fact, there's never been a ceasefire in the battle for profit. But we're about to look at the future of cameraphones and the battle to take place is more for glory than anything else.
So, if 5 and 8 megapixel shooters are busy tipping the scales in favor of this or that maker, are the 12 megapixel monsters taking on low and mid-range digicams? Of course, cameraphones are still limited compared to even the most basic of point-and-shoot cameras - optical zoom for example. Samsung areworking on that, but there is still plenty of time to go.
It doesn't mean though that we'll just sit and wait. We've got two contenders here, eager to fight it out for the Ultimate cameraphone title. The Samsung M8910 Pixon12 and the Sony Ericsson Satio each have legacies to live up to and quite a challenge to conquer.
The Samsung cameraphone hit the shelves several months earlier, but maybe Sony Ericsson used the extra time to fine tune their output and outdo their rival. Amazed as we were when we reviewed the Pixon12, we would be even happier if the Satio is able to bring the cameraphone world another step forward.
Sony Ericsson have been hitting low lately and the Satio might just be the right stuff to turn the tide. Yes, the Satio is a full-touch Symbian handset bringing the latest in mobile phone technology. But it will be the cameraphone we guess, not the smartphone, that will get most of the credit.
Before we proceed with the actual shootout there is an important note to make. The Samsung Pixon12 sports a 30mm wide-angle lens (advertised as 28mm) and that gives it roughly 17 percent wider field of view than the Satio's regular 35mm lens.
Wide angle lens is pretty useful when taking landscape and architecture photos as you don't need to go as far back to fit the whole subject in the frame. However fitting more stuff in the frame means that the things in it are actually smaller (drawn by fewer pixels, if you wish). In effect, the extra angle of view is not always needed but you are always losing some scene detail (unless you compensate by doing the legwork to get physically closer).
So now that we've got that cleared, we can move on and get busy shooting.
The Yari has got a pretty decent 5 megapixel auto focus camera, but it's main focus point is another thing - gesture gaming. And we're not talking about accelerometer-based gesture recognition.
Thanks to an optical tracker technology developed by GestureTek, the Sony Ericsson Yari can use its camera to detect your movements and translate them into games moves. It can even do wireless multiplayer.
The technology has already been available to Japanese DoCoMo cellphones but it's only now that it's making its way to world-wide availability.
General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100, GPRS/EDGE class 10, HSDPA 3.6Mbps
Form factor: Slider
Dimensions: 100 x 48 x 15.7 mm, 115 g
Display: 2.4-inch 256K color TFT display, 240 x 320 pixel resolution
Memory: 60MB integrated memory, hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
UI: Proprietary Flash-based UI
Still camera: 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, geo-tagging, face detection, smile detection
Video recording: QVGA video recording
Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, GPS receiver with A-GPS support
Misc: Gesture and motion-based gaming, Shake control, SensMe
Battery: 1000 mAh battery
Of course, Wi-Fi and GPS are also in the mix to make the device that much more tempting. The Remote Play feature, initially developed for PSP, enables users to control and access media content on Playstation 3 from their phone.
Form factor: Touchscreen slider
Dimensions: 104 x 50 x 15.5 mm, 134 g
Display: 3-inch 16M color TFT display, 240 x 432 pixel resolution
Memory: 55MB integrated memory, hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
UI: Proprietary Flash-based UI
Still camera: 8 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, touch focus, geo-tagging, face detection, smile detection, image stabilizer, smart contrast
Video recording: VGA video recording at 30 fps
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, GPS receiver with A-GPS support
Misc: Partial touchscreen functionality, accelerometer for screen auto rotate, FM radio with RDS, Remote play for Playstation 3
Battery: 1000 mAh battery
General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100 MHz, GPRS/EDGE class 10, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA 3.6 Mbps
Form factor: Touchscreen bar
Dimensions: 111 x 54 x 15 mm
Display: 3.5" 16M-color TFT resistive touchscreen, 640 x 360 pixels
Memory: 100MB integrated memory, hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 16GB), 256 MB RAM
OS: Symbian OS
Camera: 12 megapixel autofocus camera with xenon flash and video LED flash, geotagging, face and smile detection, Smile Shot, Smart contrast and VGA video recording at 30 fps
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, USB v2.0, GPS receiver with A-GPS
Misc: Accelerometer for screen auto rotate, FM radio with RDS
Battery: 1000 mAh battery
Key features
- Size: 99 x 47 x 14 mm, 94 g
- Slim slider body
- Appealing design and color options
- Dynamic themes and wallpaper animation
- Light effects
- Good keypad
- Good 256K-color QVGA display
- M2 memory card support, up to 2GB
- 2-megapixel camera
- Email client and RSS-feed reader
- A2DP enabled Bluetooth
- Quad band support, GPRS and EDGE Class 10
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Key features:
- Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support plus HSDPA 7.2Mbps
- 3-inch 65K-color WVGA touchscreen
- Qualcomm MSM7200 528 Mhz CPU and 256 MB DDR SDRAM
- 3.15 MP auto focus camera with VGA video recording
- Four-row full QWERTY slide-out keyboard
- Wi-Fi and built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS
- X-Panels interface
- Optical trackpad
- Exquisite and solid metallic body
- Standard miniUSB port and Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
- microSD memory expansion
- FM radio with RDS
- 3.5mm standard audio jack
- MS Office Mobile document editor
- Opera 9.5 web browser
- Excellent video playback performance
- Superb audio quality
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Key features:
- Quad-band GSM and 3G with HSDPA support
- 3.15 megapixel camera
- 2.2" 256K-color TFT display with 240 x 320 pixel resolution
- Secondary monochrome OLED external display
- Scratch-resistant surface for both displays
- Touch sensitive external music control keys
- Hot-swappable M2 card slot (up to 16 GB), 1 GB included
- Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
- Walkman music player with Shake control and SensMe
- FM radio with RDS
- Gesture control
- Accelerometer for screen rotation
- Basic multi-tasking support
- Smart dialing
- Threaded messaging
- Exchangeable StyleUp covers