Camera Phones Plaza

As mobile phone technology moves into a new age with touch screen, internet and digital cameras, there are so many makes, models and options you can choose from. However there still remains one thing that hasn't changed since mobiles were brought out, 'Pay-as-you-go' or 'contract'.

Pay-as-you-go and contract are and always have been the only ways available for you to use your phone. For those of you who don't know the difference yet, if you choose to go on a contract with your mobile phone you will pay a certain amount each month, and in return you will receive a free mobile phone handset as well as 'free minutes' for phone calls and text messages. If you go over the amount of 'free minutes' you are given you will have to pay extra for what you have used.

If you choose Pay-as-you-go you will have to purchase your own handset and then purchase credit which can then be used to make phone calls and send text messages. When the credit runs out you will have to 'top up' your phone with more credit before you can make any more calls or send any more texts.

If you are unsure of which would be the best choice for you then you should really weigh up the options. If you are somebody who rarely uses your phone to make calls or send text messages then a pay-as-you-go phone would probably be best for you. This way you will only have to top up every so often and will not be wasting money on minutes that you are not using. On the other hand, if you are somebody who is always on their phone then a contract would more than likely suit you. With so many mobile phones available you could potentially save you money if you shop online.

The Olympus SP-565 UZ model is the result of compressing the world’s most powerful ultra-zoom digital camera into a smaller and lighter form factor without sacrificing its famous capabilities.
It is the new Olympus 20x zoom compact camera model that enables extreme close-ups for capturing all the details, or zoom-outs for panorama pictures with beautiful landscapes, composed of 3 images. In addition, it has dual-image stabilization with Sensor-Shift Image Stabilization and Digital Image Stabilization technologies that work together to compensate hands shakes and to render clear images in different cases.

If you need to shoot an image with many people figures you can easily rely on another technology enabled in this digital camera, which focuses and optimized exposures for up to 16 faces in the same portrait picture. More than that, it gives you full control of the Aperture, Manual and Shutter Speed Priority to free your creativity and capture the perfect images.
The smile detection is not missing either, so you can preserve the nicest smiles of people, captured in 3 consecutive sequences.

Olympus SP-565 UZ is a 10MP camera that sports a 2.5-inch LCD display providing 5 Steps Brightness Adjustment, giving you the possibility to shoot in any environment with various light intensity.

Other specifications include a 1/2.33-inch CCD sensor, Electronic View Finder with Dioptic Correction, multiple focus modes (iESP Auto, Spot AF, Face Detection AF, Full-Time AF, Selective AF Target, Predictive AF, AF Lock, Manual Focus), 1/2000 sec. –1/2 sec. (up to 4 sec. in Night Scene mode) automatic shutter speed, 1/2000 sec. - 15 sec. manual shutter speed, ISO sensitivity between 64 and 6400, Digital ESP Metering, Spot Metering, Center-Weighted Metering, White Balance control settings, 33 shooting modes, 13.5 frames per second for high-speed continuous shooting, several Shooting Assist Functions, video recording with sound at up to 640 x 480 resolution at 30 frames per second, Playback Edit Effects, 12 Seconds self-timer, and up to 2GB extended memory via a microSD or xD-Picture Card.

The camera model powers from 4 AA batteries, which is enough for 410 shots, or Ni-MH 2500mAh for up to 590 shots.

You can find it in the United States at a price of around $360.

(Via Testfreaks)

Why not to take a look at some of the other cool gadgets available on the market today, especially when we have a hot new web camera from Microsoft with high-end technologies. We thought you might like it too, and we are happy to cover its details in this article.
Maybe you’ve seen it before and you can recognize it after the external design, but if you want to remember its name too, and know what to ask for at the electronics store, you need to know it’s called Microsoft LifeCam VX-5500.

This web camera uses an advanced technology known as low-light adjustment, which is in charge with controlling the image brightness and display the surroundings clearer compared to the other existent models. Let’s say that this feature has the same importance as the flash light used by digital cameras in low light conditions – if you want to be seen perfectly in low light rooms, you need light boost. More than that, the light adjustment is automatic, so you won’t have to change the settings over and over again during the afternoon and sunset.



Microsoft LifeCam VX-5500 with built-in unidirectional microphone with acoustic noise cancellation is a great solution for online video conferences and is available starting this month at a retail price of $59.95, but some saw it at $53.
It sports a fold-flat design to fit both desktop monitors and notebook displays, so you can use it on the go as often as in your room at home, or office, while it brings with 3 interchangeable faceplaces for those of you that preffer blue, white and red.



Key elements include high-quality VGA optics, 1.3MP resolution, Windows Live Messenger support, Video Effects via the software, Photo Swap, Windows Live Call Button to see who’s online, One-Touch Blogging for instant picture posting on Windows Live Spaces, and access to Video Messages beta website, where you can record and send video messages to your friends, colleagues or family.
The LifeCam Dashboard is a feature gathering all navigational controls of the web camera, like pan, tilt, zoom, face tracking and Video Effects, into the Windows Live Messenger interface, to be a handy all-in-one tool for online chat.



(Via Testfreaks)

Actually, if you want to find out how to convert an MP3 to ringtone, you should know that this is not a conversion process, but rather a setting you need to do in your cell phone in order to play a specific MP3 file when there’s an incoming call or message. Still, you have the option to create a polyphonic ringtone from an MP3 file, to be compatible with an older phone model that doesn’t support the MP3 format. Taking into account both possibilities, in the following lines I plan to explain to you how to set an MP3 song as a ringtone and how to convert the MP3 in a polyphonic tone.

First you have to look in the cell phone model specifications list and see what audio file types your handset supports. For example, Nokia 1100, which is a great model for making and receiving phone calls, with a long battery life, supports only monophonic ringtones. This type of melody is a combination of music notes played one after another, like those Chinese pencil boxes with colored pianos that worked with watch batteries, which didn’t allow you to mix more notes simultaneously, but one at a time.



Polyphonic ringtones like the ones used by Panasonic SC3 are combinations of multiple notes played simultaneously, and sound better than monophonic ringtones. Because an SC3 can play 16 notes at a time, it is called a 16-channel polyphonic phone. The most common polyphonic ringtone type is MIDI.

A few years ago cell phone manufacturers enabled the MP3 file format on their cell phone models, which is a great achievement that allowed users to bring the music they used to play only on their computers onto the handsets. This way we can carry with and play our favorite playlists wherever we go.

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The next step is to set these MP3 songs downloaded from the Internet or transferred from the computer via USB, into ringtones, for each of the contacts or groups of contacts in the phonebook. To do this you need to check if the phone model allows you to set MP3 ringtones without copyright protection, and to find out you have to look in the user’s guide. If it allows this, then you are free to use the phone’s software on your PC and transfer music files onto the phone, after which you can set them as ringtones for your phonebook entries and incoming messages by adding them first into the Ringtone-dedicated folder.
An example of cell phone model with such an issue is the iPhone. It allows you to set ringtones only from those MP3s downloaded from the Apple iTunes store.

The other subject we will discuss now is how to convert an MP3 to ringtone in the polyphonic format, also known as MIDI.
You probably have an older cell phone that doesn’t support MP3s or you just can’t stand real tones playing when someone’s calling. Well, in this case you have a bunch of friendly applications available for download, which are developed to help you with the conversion on the computer. After that, you need to connect the cell phone via USB and transfer the new MIDI files into the Ringtone-dedicated folder.



How do these programs work? –Simple, you select the source file that can be an MP3, WAV or CD track and then press the Convert button located somewhere on the application’s window. Converted files are stored in a dedicated folder where you have installed the program. From there you can send them to your phone’s Ringtone folder and choose which one will play when you’ll receive a new call or message.
Here is a list of programs you can test and convert MP3 to ringtone, in the free trial period, after which you’ll need to spend around $25 on the one that best suits your needs: Audio To MIDI, Mobile Music Polyphonic, MP3 To Ringtone Gold, IntelliScore Polyphonic, or Music Recognition Pro, and these are just a few...

When we think of the link between TV and cell phones first things that come up on our minds are the live TV feature introduced recently worldwide after having been popular in Japan, and of the TV out port which we use to connect the handset to a television panel for watching stored content on a larger display together with all the family members.

With the TV out things are simple. We encounter this feature in different gadgets today, from computer systems to small handsets like the cell phone in our pocket. The connectivity process is simple and you can follow step by step guides in the manuals in order to link the composite video cable that usually comes with the handset in the same package, from the phone to your TV panel.



While Samsung uses the ATC cable models, Nokia has its Video-Out Cable CA-75U, both connecting via the 3 colored jacks for video and left-right audio signals.
Nokia N95 is an example of multimedia phone that features TV out, allowing you to play cool 3D games on your TV using keys on the keypad, or just watch some funny clips recorded on the go with your friends. This feature is compatible with all TV types if you set the correct signal handling such as PAL or NTSC, which depends on the country you are located in. It works even on High Definition TVs, but the resolution is standard.
The SDTV provides horizontal resolutions of 720 pixels at 4:3 aspect ratio and with around 30 frames per second.

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Live TV has been available in Asia since 2005 and it was introduced recently in Europe and United States as well. It enables compatible high-end phones to receive digital TV broadcasts and is known also as mobile TV. This technology is available as Satellite Digital Multimedia Broadcasting and Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting.

Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld is the format for Terrestrial Digital Video Broadcasting found in US and Europe, with the Digital Multimedia Broadcasting as the main competitor for receiving TV content adapted to the mobile viewing.
The technology is enabled by the telecommunication carrier you are subscribed at and provides several types of video content: video-on-demand, traditional/linear and live TV, while the TV podcasts consist of on-demand content after subscription, when the videos are stored on the phone so you to view them at a later time. It is even possible to schedule the delivery times depending on the day hours avoiding intensive traffic.

The best method for using this service is via the high-speed 3G connectivity, and handsets meeting special requirements are those with large memory, long battery life, high-resolution display, advanced user interface and high processing power.
Such smartphone is the new Nokia N96, a highly wanted multimedia computer with lots of features including TV out and Live TV. It has 16GB internal storage capacity, support for up to 24GB external storage, 128MB RAM, 256MB system memory, a 2.8-inch TFT LCD with 16 million colors and 240 x 320 resolution, the S60 user interface with multimedia menu, accelerometer sensor for the landscape mode, high-speed 3.6Mbps transfer, DVB-H based mobile TV with internal antenna, powerful integrated speakers, and up to 4 hours of TV playback time via DVB-H.



In addition to offering the TV out connectivity for playing games and watching videos on a TV display, Nokia N96 allows podcasting with direct wireless access to directory, feed updates, downloads, as well as to watch program guides with automatic updates and channel discovery, replay TV programs instantly, record TV shows, set the reminder for the program guide, use interactive services, and subscribe to multiple TV content types such as previews, free-to-air and pay-per-view, using multiple payment methods.

To be able to use all these cool mobile TV features, each telecommunication carrier offers users different subscription packages at affordable costs. One example is T-Mobile TV in UK with Made for Mobile channels including short episode highlights, full episodes and pre-recorded shows, as well as live TV channels, at 1 British Pound for 24 hours, 3.50 British Pounds for a month, or 5 British Pounds per month if you subscribe to Sky Mobile TV with a set of channels for sports, music or entertainment categories. These include CNN, MTV, Cartoon Network and SKY News.

Possibilities are almost endless, but we are still waiting for a larger TV channels collection that might include Discovery Channel, HBO, and, why not, local TV channels for each country.