Winged Power Photography

The Sony Ericsson C902 Cybershot and C702 Cybershot

Wow, all I can say is... I'm going to be on a continual waiting experience for the replacement for my current phone. Each new generation seems to be better and better. Note that I say this referring, really, only to Sony Ericsson, Nokia, and possibly LG.

What gets me about these new phones from Sony Ericsson is that they continue to offer the strong BlueTooth support, nice and simple candybar design, as well as the ability to access the high speed cellular networks, available in the United States. On top of that, they take great pictures and from the white papers for both of these phones, they will be able to take some nice video clips, and save all of it onto an expandable memory card, which expands the phones' storage ability from what is already a generous amount.

Having said that... let's look at what Sony Ericsson's two new phones have to offer the photographer who doesn't want to carry or spend on a seperate dedicated point and shoot.

The Sony Ericsson C702 Cybershot: Durable, Water resistant, and Dust resistant!

The C702 is a nice little number that's got a 3.1MP autofocusing camera built in. Like all of Sony Ericsson's CyberShot camera phones, this is equipped to do both photo and video blogging, allow for bidirectional BlueTooth file and network connection transfers, as well as support the high speed celphone data networks.

Like its bigger brother, it has a new feature called "Smile Detection", which allows the camera to focus on smiling faces and focus on them, to ensure that your photographs' subjects are captured sharply.

While the C702 is 2MP less than it's bigger brother, it makes up for it with water and dust resistance, allowing for the camera to be exposed to normally unfriendly elements, allowing you to take photographs at the beach, where water and sand are bound to get everywhere.

The Sony Ericsson C902 Cybershot: 5MP, HSDPA, and 160MB of internal storage!

Look, my W810i takes great pics, with the 2MP it was given. The autofocus has allowed me to take photographs that had some folks going... wow, that came from your celphone? But while that is indeed great, it was limited by the fact that it was.. indeed, 2MP. Looking at the C902, I'm thinking: 5MP!

I'm very eager to get my hands on this camera and try it out, the first chance I get. At 5MP, the image can be resampled down to 4MP or 3MP, to reduce the effect of noise, allowing one to produce very nice photographs, without having to resort to a seperate point and shoot digital camera.

In addition, this phone also supports HSDPA, allowing for a theoretical max downstream transfer of 3mbps and a theoretical max upstream of 384kbps. This is equivelent to a good ADSL connection or what most folks were familiar with, with older generations of cablemodems. The best part? Not fixed in one location. The phone's bluetooth support, which Sony Ericsson has historically kept open and flexible, will allow you to tether your laptop to the phone via BlueTooth and get online to get some work done.

To top it off, you get 160MB of system memory to play around with on the phone. With all the themes, ring tones, and misc apps/media that people are likely to load, this means that applications have room to run in and data has room to sit in.

That, and you get to plug in a seperate memory card to expand storage. Sweet.

So... Why Bother With CameraPhones?

Personally, as much as a fan I am of gadgets, I find that the more gadgets I have on my person, the less productive I become. You only have two hands to work with. You only have so many moments you can give to a device. And... there's only so much room in your backpack/pouch/belt/etc.

Sure, I can spend the same money for a digital compact point and shoot camera. It will produce images of much better quality than I would get from a camera phone. However, I find that while I can get a better picture, I normally would use such a camera to capture reference pictures for ideas. Record visual notes. Making a portable copy of a menu, map, or business card. All of which, are functions that do not require a high end compact digital camera. But I would still like to have the ability to take a decent picture!

Combining good photography abilities into a celphone is a good idea for the uses I have in mind. It's one device, so I'm not lugging around two or more devices with me, where one device will suffice.

Don't get me wrong, I won't be making competition prints from such a camera phone, unless the competition is for camera phones. But it will allow me to make a "scan" of a document and print it out in high enough quality to serve the purpose of a portable scanner. So.. what more do I really need?

Both the Sony Ericsson C902 and the Sony Ericsson C702 will fill their respective niches successfully. I'm already thinking it's time to get ready to pre-order the Sony Ericsson C902 to replace my current W810i. And I love my current camera phone.

Technorati Tags: c702 c902 Camera Cell Phone celphone cybershot Product Review sony ericsson Sony Ericsson