Nokia introduces a picture-perfect camera phone

Picture this:

You are out on a lark at the mall when you bump into a chum from high school you haven’t seen in ages. Good thing you have a camera phone with you to snap up this rare moment. You can easily send an MMS and an update to all your friends.

But what if your long lost friend wants to send a personalized greeting? Most camera phones available on the market now that are equipped with a video recorder capture just a few seconds of video, which is not much for someone who has been absent for ages.

The people at Nokia have come up with a better camera phone that offers superb features that will hopefully make everyone an amateur journalist and filmmaker. The new Nokia 7610 camera phone comes with a one-megapixel camera that is capable of high quality images for digital photo printing. More than that, it has a video camera that can record up to 10 minutes of video. It even comes with a Movie Director software application that allows the user to enhance his video clips with its smart and auto editing features.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

"Digital imaging has developed in ways that were unimaginable since digital cameras first entered the mainstream only five years ago," says Mauro Montanaro, Nokia Multimedia Asia Pacific vice president for sales and channel management. "In 2003, the number of camera phones sold outnumbered digital cameras. We are now entering an era where camera phones will become mainstream imaging devices.

The Nokia 7610 phone offers a 65,000 color screen for viewing still images and video captured by the integrated camera and watching real-time video streaming using the built-in RealOne mobile player. The one-megapixel camera features a high-quality lens, 4x digital zoom, a self-timer and a night mode to capture images in low-light conditions. It comes with a 64MB reduced-size MultiMediaCard and offers quick and convenient capturing, printing, storing and sending of photo-quality images and videos.

The new camera phone was the spotlight during the "Showcase Nokia: Passion for Communications" event held recently in Hong Kong. The same phone was also introduced at CeBIT 2004 in Hanover, Germany.

Also unveiled at the Hong Kong event were the new Nokia 9500 Communicator, a tri-band device that supports E-GPRS and WiFi 802.11b, as well as a number of mobile enhancements for both the Nokia 7610 and 9500.

Urpo Karjalainen, Nokia Asia Pacific Area senior vice president for customer and market operations, says that communications turned visual in 2003.

"Over 200 operators around the world now provide MMS services to their customers," says Karjalainen. "Camera phones sales exceeded that of digital still cameras in 2003. IDC, in its January 2004 report, estimates that camera phones will soon become the most prevalent image capture device in the world. According to IDC, images captured, received and shared with a camera phone will become dominant in 2005, with a total of 159.8 million images coming from camera phones that year. Global camera phone images will reach 251.2 billion in 2006 and 353.2 billion in 2007. These numbers indicate the significant potential of imaging devices."

While the new Nokia 7610 is not intended to replace professional cameras, it offers convenience in terms of imaging possibilities. Tyler McGee, Nokia South East Asia Pacific vice president for sales, describes the phone as having a built-in all-around camera.

"How many people go out carrying with them their cameras all the time?" he says. "The Nokia 7610 is a digital camera you can carry with you always and easily share those images with your loved ones."

The Nokia 7610 is also designed to popularize the concept of Nokia Lifeblog, an application that adds an automatic digital diary in anybody’s pocket. By organizing the digital contents, such as images, videos or messages, in one’s phone, a user can create a personal logbook or multimedia memo on the phone. When uploaded to the Nokia Lifeblog on the PC, people can browse and search their multimedia diary in an easy to use timeline or share diary items with friends or family via e-mail. An Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition software that comes with Nokia 7610 package lets users organize and edit digital pictures on their PC.

Mobile enhancements for the Nokia 7610 include:

• The Nokia Image Album is a 20GB hard disk drive that can store digital images, video clips and messages, which the user can view, share, organize, edit on a TV screen using a remote control.

• The Nokia Image Viewer is a portable device where a user can show and share images from their compatible phones on a TV screen or video projector at home or in the office.

• The Nokia Advanced Car Kit is Nokia’s first car kit that may be connected either by wireless connection via Bluetooth technology, or by conventional wired connection via mobile holders.

• The Nokia Headrest Handsfree is a convenient basic headrest handsfree with built-in microphone, speaker and detachable headrest unit and can be mounted on the headrest bars of a car’s front seat.

On the other hand, the new Nokia 9500 Communicator is one of the first cellular devices in the market designed to meet the demands of corporate IT departments for customization, manageability and security.

The Nokia 9500 Communicator takes the most popular office solutions mobile by bringing e-mail, personal information management, with PC synchronization, browsing, vertical enterprise applications and even document, spreadsheet and presentation creation into the pockets of mobile professionals, allowing them to effectively utilize their time while on the road.

McGee points out that the markets in the Asia Pacific region are growing.

"Asia is at the cutting edge of technology," he says. "Compared with other parts of the world, this area is even more advanced that the United States."

Since Nokia entered the Philippine market in 1995-1996, it has been part of the growth of the telecommunications market.

"We have seen the market mature, and we are committed to it in the long run," he adds.