Understanding Camera PhonesUnderstanding Camera PhonesCameras are one of the hottest new additions to the world of cellular technology. It's like the saying says a picture is worth a thousand words. If you're meeting a friend or buisness associate in an unfamiliar location, it's often helpful to send a photo along. If you're trying to show someone what something looks like when they can't be there it's an excellent alternative, and lets face it sometimes it's just plain fun to have a new toy.
One thing to understand is your camera phone will never replace your existing standard or digital camera. Most of them have small resolutions, in many cases smaller than 640 x 480. There are some new entries on the market in the two and three megapixel range but these are extremely expensive in in the infancy of their development stage. Secondly the pictures taken are almost never of quality that can be printed.These pictures do work well for sending to others camera cell phone users, email messages, posting on web pages, blogs or moblogs (a moblog is blog made up of cell phone pictures). Depending on how many pictures you will be taking you will need to consider how you get the pictures off of the camera. In some of the more advanced models you can get a data cable or use an infrared port to send the pictures to a computer or laptop. A second option is sending them via data transmission to your email or a third party location. If this is something you plan on doing be sure to investigate if there are any extra costs and if you will be charged for airtime minutes. Even though the picture are relatively small and compressed, the data transmission is usually 14.4 kbps and could take a while and eat up a large portion of your plan minutes.