Camera phones are one of the greatest and most important innovations of the new millennium. It’s become quite fashionable to have a phone that does as many things as possible at once – preferably, most people want it to act as their organizer, enable them to send emails, access instant messaging, social networking sites and the world wide web, provide them with access to several TV channels and music, but also enable them to take pictures. One can see why; life is full of nice moments and one doesn’t always have a digital camera in one’s bag to capture them. A phone, on the other hand, is usually always readily at hand because one needs it for other things and so a built-in camera is just another bonus feature. People find this so convenient, it seems, that last year, camera phones outsold digital cameras, which are harder to use, and also have the disadvantage of being a lot less interesting gadgets: they just take photos and don’t do much else.

Before you buy

It’s understandable if you would like to get a camera phone. Unless you are a professional photographer or unless it’s a very special day that simply requires you to bring along your camera, a camera phone will take nice snapshots for you without you having to understand and configure the large number of settings usually available on a ‘proper’ camera. In order to make sure the camera phone you’ll choose is indeed simple and convenient to use, it is a good idea to try a few out at the store. Most stores will allow you to do this and it is indeed the simplest and best way to find a camera phone that suits your very own needs and that you personally find simple and practical to handle. There are two other things you need to consider before making the decision of buying a camera phone. Firstly, some employers have banned camera phones in the work place due to privacy issues. Check if this is the case for your employer, and if it is, you might want to reconsider your decision, because assuming you work eight hours a day, it might not be convenient for you to be unavailable for that long a period of time, especially if you’ve got children, for example. Secondly, if you want high quality photos, a camera phone is not the thing to go for. Digital cameras nowadays have at least eight mega pixel in resolution whereas, even though there are exceptions, the average camera phone won’t go much higher than five. The number of pixels is indicative of the quality and sharpness of the picture, and these will often be not so good in a camera phone. In other words, you should be buying a camera phone because you like the phone and want the camera as an additional feature, not if you are planning on using it mainly for photography.

Things to consider

As stated above, you will want to test the phone in the shop to see if it’s easy to handle and understand. Try and take a few test shots to see how the quality of the photos measures up. Also, check for a little mirror next to the camera; this is always useful if you have no one to take your photo. You can then take it yourself and, thanks to the mirror, you see what you’re shooting. Another thing to consider is that you will probably want to do more than just keep the pictures on your phone, maybe upload them on social networking sites or put them on a nice disk so that you’ll always have them and be able to look at them. For you to be able to do this, it is important to check how you will get them off your phone and on a computer. Does the phone have a USB port? Can you send pictures around per email, or does the phone maybe have Bluetooth? You will want at least one option for sharing those pictures. Lastly, look for a fair storage capacity or you won’t be able to take a lot of photos at one time. If in doubt, ask in the store how many photos would fit into the storage at any one time.