Hotwired: Cellphones breaking down the megapixel barrier

Finally people have found a good use for those cellphones with cameras in them: if you're involved in an emergency, whip out your camera-phone and start firing off shots, or filming if your phone is up to it.

Three years ago this would have been unthinkable. Cellphones were unable to store more than the most mediocre photos, the camera lens was unable to zoom and the resolution was typically about a third of a megapixel.

Today that's all changed, as the footage from the London Underground has shown us. Now cellphones are almost all equipped with cameras and most of the new crop have broken the megapixel barrier, meaning the photos are higher quality and might actually provide some useful evidence should you be unlucky enough to get caught up in anything nasty.

Both Telecom and Vodafone sport megapixel cameras, and with the addition of extra memory and digital zooms you're able to get pretty good shots.

Though we're not quite up to the new Korean standard of 5 megapixel camera phones, those can't be too far away.

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SANYO 5600

Telecom's new phone is also the nicest one on their side of the fence.

Its earlier camera phones were okay, but the new Sanyo has a 1.3 megapixel camera with a 1GB memory card to back it up.

That means you can take roughly 250 photos with the resolution set at the camera's highest rating or several minutes of video footage, although only in 30 second chunks.

The microphone is great, but seems better at picking up the voice of the cameraman than the action going on in front of the lens.

There's a good flash or a full-time light if you're videoing, though that's likely to drain your battery pretty quickly.

The camera phone also has a great screen, with 260,000 colours, which is nice.

Price: up to $899 depending on the plan

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MOTOROLA PEBL V6

Motorola, the company that is No 1 in America, started to make waves here with the launch of its V3 ultra-thin phone. The new PEBL V6 is finally delivering on the promise.

Instead of making the phone as thin as possible, Motorola has packed in more features but made it just as stylish. It's a lozenge rather than a flat flip-phone and it looks great.

Unlike the Sanyo, the PEBL doesn't have external storage, so there's a paltry 5MB of onboard memory, but the camera's okay and the phone has short-range wireless technology in the form of Bluetooth, so you can wear those funky wire-free headsets.

Vodafone hasn't said whether it will bring the PEBL to New Zealand yet so give them a call and demand it.

Price: to be announced but expect it to be up to $1000

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SONY ERICSSON S600I

Another phone with a difference. No flip this time, this one slides like a slide rule (for those old enough to remember them).

Sony Ericsson is getting into bed with digital music in a big way so you get a phone with a great set of speakers as well as a handsfree headset. It's billed as a "multimedia extravaganza" which means you can turn it on its side to play games on its huge screen.

Nice. You also get an FM radio, a 1.3 megapixel camera, and an RSS reader so you can keep up with your favourite blog while you're on the move. Oddly, it only has 64 MB of onboard memory, so don't go crazy with those photos and songs.

This phone is also on the coming soon list so ring Vodafone for an update on if/when it's coming to New Zealand.

Price: to be announced