bq.. If we’re not careful, imaging could fade to a niche application in phones. Some think it’s happening already.

p. Or so said Kodak Chief Executive “Dan Carp”:http://news.com.com/Are+camera+phones+losing+their+snap/2100-1039_3-5615689.html during a keynote address at the CTIA wireless show on March 14th.

Aloha Dan. _Of course_ camera phones suck right now! Friggin’ current state of the art in camera phones is 1998 in stand-alone digital camera years. Like that’s so 640×480. But no worries, pretty soon you’ll be able to purchase a “seven megapixel camera phone”:http://engadget.com/entry/1234000357035138. And I am sure that users complain about the -ease- difficultly of use, but that’ll be fixed too. Probably not anytime soon, but eventually.

Dan, this I do know; camera phones are gonna suck less this year and the next and the next, so that pretty soon they’re not gonna suck. Combine this with with the fact that humans inherently visual creatures and you won’t ever have a “niche application.”

P.S. Also in the News.com “article”:http://news.com.com/Are+camera+phones+losing+their+snap/2100-1039_3-5615689.html linked to above is this:

bq.. Last year, 180 million camera phones were sold worldwide, a 130 percent increase over 2003. Most analysts believe the growth will continue, with about 280 million camera phones sold by the end of the year, and there may be one billion camera phones in circulation by year’s end.

p. ONE BILLION camera phones. Deeeaaamn. Far from being a niche application, imaging via phones is about to explode. Think about how that will effect societies and politics… especially local politics (just go take some pictures of the potholes in your neighborhood and send them to your local representative).

With both “CeBIT”:http://www.cebit.de/homepage_e?x=1 (”world’s leading event for information technology, telecommunications, software and services”) and “CTIA”:http://www.ctia.org/ (the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association) taking place recently you just knew that some ground-breaking mobile phones where going to be announced. Indeed some were! I’ve summarized some of mobiles I found interesting below:

Microsoft PocketPC Phones
“Samsung i730″:http://www.msmobiles.com/news.php/3651.html PocketPC mini form factor (with QWERTY keyboard)
“Samsung SGH-i750″:http://www.msmobiles.com/news.php/3660.html PocketPC mini form factor (with “normal” phone keypad)
“T-Mobile MDA IV”:http://www.msmobiles.com/news.php/3668.html “communicator” style phone

Music Phones (iPod killas)
“Samsung SGH-i300″:http://www.msmobiles.com/news.php/3667.html with a three gig hard drive!
“T-Mobile SDA II and SDA II”:http://ppcw.net/?itemid=2289 add more music with a miniSD card
“Sony Ericsson W800″:http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000173035991/ featuring MemoryShit flash memory card

Other Phones of Note
“Samsung SCH-V770″:http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000357035138/ seven megapixel cameraphone
“Firefly”:http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000520035844/ kids emergency phone
“Nokia 2115i”:http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000717035948/ featuring a built-in flashlight
“Siemens M75″:http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000853035224/ rugged phone
“Samsung WIP-6050M”:http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000730035597/ WiFi Phone

It’s good to see handset manufacturers trying out new form factors and adding features like dedicated music playback buttons, hard drives, QWERTY keypads, sliding keypads, “real” cameras, flashlights, etc. Clearly mobiles are becoming more personal (load ALL of your music on ‘em) and more of a always-on-ya necessity.

Damn, the power went out again! Where’s my flashlight… erh, I mean my mobile?

_*Update 2005_03_17*_
I’m kind of impressed with Motorola’s new offerings. I left a few off the list above. Here they are…

“PEBL V6″:http://cellphones.engadget.com/entry/1234000693036036/ Compact little flip phone. Nice!
“MS400″:http://cellphones.engadget.com/entry/1234000033035987/ Small, light CDMA/EVDO handset
“MS550″:http://cellphones.engadget.com/entry/1234000963036201/ Trick design on this 3-megapixel cameraphone
“SLVR V8 and the V280″:http://cellphones.engadget.com/entry/1234000377035975/ Candybar-style Razor-ish handsets

_*Update: 2005_03_22*_
“Pantech PH-S8000T”:http://www.msmobiles.com/news.php/3685.html Trick, hinged flip-phone.

“TechWorld”:http://www.techworld.com/, ‘The UK’s Infrastructure & Networking Knowledge Centre,’ recently published a series of articles on Bluetooth. I’ve put some links below to the articles for easy access.

“The nuts and bolts of Bluetooth”:http://www.techworld.com/mobility/features/index.cfm?FeatureID=678
“Why Bluetooth version 2 matters”:http://www.techworld.com/mobility/features/index.cfm?featureid=1198
“What do Bluetooth profiles do?”:http://www.techworld.com/mobility/features/index.cfm?FeatureID=653
“Bluetooth better than WLAN in mobile phones”:http://www.techworld.com/mobility/features/index.cfm?FeatureID=1003

Here’s an interesting quote from the WLAN article:

bq.. …a recent report from ARC Group, which says that shipments of Bluetooth smart phones will reach 87.5 million units - about 70 percent of the smart phone market - by 2009. This compares to WLAN smart phone shipments, which the group predicts will only reach 18.75 million units by the same year.

p. Some good reading. With the large number of Bluetooth devices shipping some interesting Bluetooth-enabled applications may finally be coming… but don’t hold your breath, because everything in the mobile world takes time.

I think a good metric for the true ‘arrival’ of Bluetooth will be things like: all iPods ship with Bluetooth, it becomes hard to purchase a desktop/laptop that doesn’t have Bluetooth (as it’s currently hard to purchase a motherboard without a built-in LAN chipset), aftermarket car stereos start shipping with Bluetooth, most automobiles ship with Bluetooth… oh, and of course, there’s some useful applications and peripherals that take advantage of Bluetooth.

P.S. Here’s a link to the Bluetooth “specifications page”:http://www.bluetooth.org/spec/, and here’s a link to PaloWireless’ “page”:http://www.palowireless.com/infotooth/tutorial/profiles.asp on Bluetooth protocol (it’s a bit more user friendly).

Several applications are starting to show up that turn your Bluetooth-enabled mobile into a remote control for your PC/Mac/Linux box. For example, “Bemused”:http://bemused.sourceforge.net/ is an application that:

bq.. …is a system which allows you to control your music collection from your phone, using Bluetooth. It requires a Series 60 or UIQ phone (e.g. Nokia 7650/3650, or Sony Ericsson P800/P900), and a PC with a Bluetooth adapter.

p. and some of the things you can do with Bemused:

bq.. * Browse your music collection on your phone
* Play files in any format supported by Winamp - including MP3s, CDs, MIDIs, etc.
* Control Winamp versions 2, 3 and 5, Windows Media Player and PowerPoint Viewer
* Pause, stop, rewind, fast-forward etc.
* Add songs to the playlist and use shuffle and repeat
* Browse and select songs in your playlist
* Download songs to your phone (supported formats: WAV and MIDI; plus MP3 for UIQ)
* Customise the look of the system with skins

p. For the Mac you can purchase “Salling Software’s”:http://homepage.mac.com/jonassalling/Shareware/ Clicker application. “Clicker”:http://homepage.mac.com/jonassalling/Shareware/Clicker/ is a Bluetooth remote control application that among other things allows you to control iTunes from a number of mobiles as well as Bluetooth Palm devices.

For “Microsoft Smartphone”:http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/smartphone/default.mspx owners, there’s a number of applications like RuttenSoft’s “Media Remote 2004″:http://www.ruttensoft.com/smartphone/mediaremote.htm. At Microsoft’s “Techfest”:http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=msftresearch03&date=20050303 (Seattle Times pain-in-the-ass registration required) Microsoft demonstrated a remote photo slide show application using Windows Media Center.

Of course, my PC doesn’t have Bluetooth, so I’m going to have to purchase a “Bluetooth adapter”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006B7DB/ for it. Someday ALL computers will be wirelessly enabled from the get-go (WiFi and Bluetooth or whatever the wireless standards du jour become)… as will all mobiles.

“Andy Ihnatko”:http://www.cwob.com/yellowtext/, The Chicago Sun-Times’ technology columnist, “talks”:http://www.itconversations.com/clip.php?showid=340&start=51:35&stop=52:17 about how “Bluetooth”:http://www.bluetooth.com/ is like bacon. His full — and hilarious — talk can be found “here”:http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail340.html. It’s part of ITConversations’ “full series”:http://www.itconversations.com/series/macosx2004.html of talks from the recent “Mac OS X Conference”:http://conferences.oreillynet.com/macosx2004/.

Ok, to be a little more pragmatic, “here’s”:http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=42234 a link to a “Microsoft’s Channel 9″:http://channel9.msdn.com/ video demonstrating a trick little Bluetooth application (Anil Dhawan of Microsoft uses his Bluetooth-enabled phone to control a PowerPoint presentation on his PC).