Hot wired: Picture phones

By PAUL BRISLEN

Camera phones. What are you supposed to do with them? Who wants a camera that's got such lousy resolution? The pictures are awful, you can't do anything with them but keep them on your phone. It's pointless, right?

Well not any more. The next generation of camera phones is about to be released onto the New Zealand market and the cameras are finally getting to the point where they take decent photos.

For the technically minded, these cameras are all megapixel, which means the quality of the photos is much better than the old phones. Send them to your PC and you could actually make a real photo out of them. They're getting to the point where they're almost as good as a photo taken the old fashioned way, you know with a camera, but not quite. Maybe the year after next.

These cameras also have zooms, for the first time. The Nokia has a 4x zoom while both the Sony Ericsson and Alcatel have whopping 8x zooms so you can really get in among the action.

But these cameras are also high-end phones with all the bells and whistles. Polyphonic ring tones (so realistic you'll think that song is on the radio rather than your phone ringing and you'll ignore it. You know who you are), full-colour games, FM radios and MP3 music players. Both the Nokia and Sony Ericsson have removable memory cards that let you expand the phones' capacity which is nice. Now you can do away with your new digital music player and stick it all in your phone. Fortunately the battery life has been extended as well.

The Sony Ericsson has a pivoting hinge thing that makes it stand out from the masses of flip phones you'll see around. It opens like a jack knife which is cool. The phone is based on one sold in Japan that has a funky orange plastic shell but this is a more refined silver. Ah well. The Nokia has a nice curve to it that should mean it will slide into your pocket with remarkable ease and looks very Scandinavian somehow.

All the phones work on the Vodafone network and go on sale later this year. Pricing has yet to be announced but will be

Sony Ericsson S700

$1599

1.3 Megapixel camera

8x zoom

16 MB memory stick (upgradable to 1 GB)

Alcatel One Touch 756

Clip on covers

Synchronise personal info with your PC

9 hours talk time

Nokia 7610

64 MB memory

Bluetooth

FM radio

4x zoom