 The Samsung i550 Phonecam
I visited the new Samsung Experience at the Time Warner Building to see what was available in their latest line of phonecams. I asked the manager if I could use my own SD card to record some images, and he agreed.
With the help of a friendly but not very knowledgeable "salesperson" (you can't purchase any of these items), I began my experiment with the SPH-i550 1-megapixel camera. My first disappointment was the need to use the stylus to navigate the menus. Between the both of us, we were able to figure out how to get the camera to work and then transfer the images onto the SD card. The D-pad wasn't very helpful which augurs against using this phonecam very quickly.
This first shot turned out to be at the VGA setting and then scaled down to 320 x 240 which I normally do with my Treo 600 photos. The color balance was achieved rapidly, and the contrast is high as to be expected.
 To be fair, I have to say that I was tethered by a coiled wire, but I was trying to get the best shots possible with the ambient lighting. With this shot, I used the setting "Best," which turned out to be 1152 x 864. There's no vignetting, but there seems to be some softness at the edges, which is typical of phonecam lenses. When you look at them and see how small they are, it amazing that they can do any much better than a pinhole camera.
For the next shot, this was the best lighting available. This is another of their phones yet to be released. Again, this is a 1152 x 864 shot reduced to 320 x 240. The color correction is fine but even after taking several shots, I couldn't get an appreciable increase of resolution from my experience with other VGA phonecams. The increased number of pixels doesn't translate to improved image quality.
For a comparison, I took a shot of their new phone with the 1.5GB mini hard drive with a laptop screen in the background in order to get a good exposure of the screen. I'm using my Treo 600. First thing is that the color has a red-orange shift, but I think the clarity (a subjective term) is acceptable for a phonecam. The major difference is that I can operate the Treo's phonecam entirely with the D-pad making it very convenient.
9:11:43 PM 
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