Phone/Camera Combo Primer

These days cell phones come with all kinds of features including digital cameras. While these phone and camera combo units are fun for taking quick snapshots, don’t depend on them for shooting serious digital pictures.

A lot of the latest cell phones hitting the market have built in digital color cameras. The new Samsung SGH-V200 has a camera that is actually built right into the phone itself and you can pivot it back and forth to shoot from fore or aft. Features include a 65,000 color screen with graphical interface, superb 40 polyphonic sound, and a compact design. www.samsung.com

Motorola’s T720i actually has a camera attachment that you plug into the bottom, but either way it serves the same purpose. It means that a camera is now built into your cell phone. Features include a large, color screen and iconic user-interface, real musical ringtones, and downloadable games, graphics, and images. Camera features include excellent low light performance for taking photos inside or on cloudy days , capture and store pictures or send picture messages to email addresses, and 180-degree rotating lens. Camera stores up to 48 photos. $499. www.motorola.com

A lot of consumers wanting to know whether to buy a separate digital camera now that they have a camera installed in their phone, or in the case of the new Palm Zire 71, it has a camera built right into the Palm. What I tell people is that these cameras that are built into the cell phones and the new Palm are low-resolution digital cameras. Often times they are 1 megapixel and lower in resolution. That’s fine if you want to take a fun shot of somebody walking a dog down the street or a lot of people take a picture on a blind date and email it to their friends from the phone. That’s fine. But these low resolution shots won’t look that hot if you print them out or especially if its an important shot of your kids or if you’re on vacation. www.palm.com

So what we recommend is, if you get one of these new camera enabled cell phones or the new Palm, use the camera as a toy-- its great to have in a pinch if you have nothing else. But if your taking serious shots, you want to have a least something like the FinePix A200 2-megapixel camera from Fuji -- which you can now find on the market for as little as $150. www.fujifilm.com