Orange Unpeels Samsung BlackBerry-esque i600

[Jerry Raia]

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/04/12/orange_readies_samsung_i600/

"Orange will be bringing Samsung's Windows Mobile-based BlackBerry-like i600 smart phone to the UK and France, the carrier's website has revealed. It'll arrive toward the end of this month, others have claimed."



Why are a lot of these devices compared to Blackberrys? Are Blackberrys called Smartphone-esque? I'm curious though. As you can see it has the camera in front for video calls. Has anyone ever used this feature? If so how well did it work? I can't imagine a 0.3 MP camera providing much of a usable image.

[Jerry Raia]

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/04/12/orange_readies_samsung_i600/

"Orange will be bringing Samsung's Windows Mobile-based BlackBerry-like i600 smart phone to the UK and France, the carrier's website has revealed. It'll arrive toward the end of this month, others have claimed."



Why are a lot of these devices compared to Blackberrys? Are Blackberrys called Smartphone-esque? I'm curious though. As you can see it has the camera in front for video calls. Has anyone ever used this feature? If so how well did it work? I can't imagine a 0.3 MP camera providing much of a usable image.

[Pete Paxton]

And why does this have Wi-Fi and the Blackjack doesn't? :?

[Jerry Raia]

Yeah good question, I'm sure it is the carriers. I hardly ever use WiFi anymore though.

[kiwi]

Blackberrys are what people see at work.. hence thats what they think of.. like MP3 players are collectively called "ipods"

[quiksand]

I think 0.3 MP is enough for a Video Call. A 320x240 screen only has 76.800 pixels. 0.3 MP is about 4 times more pixels than the screen can support. It should work just fine. If it was a video call that could somehow be shown on a PC screen then I would agree that 0.3 MP isn't enough.

[Arne Hess]

Originally Posted by Jerry Raia

As you can see it has the camera in front for video calls. Has anyone ever used this feature? If so how well did it work? I can't imagine a 0.3 MP camera providing much of a usable image.

I'm using video telephony over UMTS rarely (but not because of the 'low' quality but for other reasons) but I can tell you that 0.3 megapixel are quite enough for mobile to mobile calls.
Everything more wouldn't makes too much sense with todays screens and the network configurations.

[Jerry Raia]

The screen size never occurred to me. ops:

[Stinger]

I've tried video calling and it's a bit useless (especially if you don't use a headset).

As you can imagine, to give a good image to the viewer you need to hold the phone at arms length. Trying to speak to someone when your phone is so far away from your mouth is impossible anywhere that you couldn't use a laptop and a webcam.