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'Real' photographers tend to be dismissive of camera phones, although some of us are actually quite [URL="http://dpnow.com/forum2/showthread.php?t=10291"]impressed[/URL] with what they can achieve.
But now, after nearly a month of owning a cutting-edge smartphone, I'm really impressed - not just from the conventional photo quality perspective, but what smartphones like my Android HTC Desire can use their cameras for.
How about [URL="http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/#text"]Google Goggles[/URL]? It's an experimental software app. from Google Mobile Lands, but it's available for public use and it can already do lots, from scan bar codes so you can check prices, to translate restaurant menus in foreign languages when you are on holiday. In fact, here are the developers behind Google Goggles to explain their work i person - you should be amazed:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhgfz0zPmH4[/ame]
And what about 'augmented reality' browsing? This is where you point your camera at the world outside and the system uses your GPS location and the phone's digital compass to work out what you are looking at and dynamically bring up all sorts of information. Google Goggles is already evolving in this direction, but we already have well developed app with such a capability in [URL="http://www.layar.com/"]Layar[/URL]. Here is a video that gives a taster of what Layar does:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64_16K2e08[/ame]
So I ask myself if the days of a conventional digital cameras simply doing one thing, producing photos (OK, and now usually videos) just for visual enjoyment, should come to an end? If mobile phones can do so much with their integrated cameras, shouldn't conventional cameras be able to to do things like this? Maybe [URL="http://dpnow.com/6860.html"]Casio's GPS camera prototype[/URL] shown at CES and PMA earlier this year is a pointer to the way for war or digital cameras.
On a slightly lighter note, I've installed another free app onto my phone that pretends to make my phone into a Star Trek 'tricorder' complete wih sound effects and on-screen graphical animations. But it dawned on me the other day that the people working on Star Trek who devised the original tricorder might not have guessed that smartphones would be able to do many tricorder type functions in such a short period of history.
And to round off, have a look at this:
[IMG]http://dpnow.com/files/blog/barcode.gif[/IMG]
It's a 2-dimensional 'bar' code. It contains a web link and the idea is that you point your smartphone camera at it, using a suitable scanner app (like Google Goggles, for example) and it deciphers it and takes your phone's browser to the Web page it's linked to.
Can you tell me where the the above barcode takes you?
I have used a contract phone for going on 20 years now, and would you believe with Vodafone, I have never changed. Had many differant phones in that time the HTC being the most advanced.
Patrick
I sort of fancy an upgrade, but can't bring myself to spend more on calls.:\ Very interesting though.
Actually, I do have an O2 XDA which my son gave me, also with camera and GPS, but as far as I can make out, it doesn't update the GPS unless you are on a contract.
Neither have I been able to synchronise the Microsoft Office and Calendar. Not sure whether it is because it was originally licensed to my son or because we are not on contract.
Anyway, the phone and the camera work.