Cell phone video cams start to have ‘reel’ feel

Suzanne Choney • E-mail

Among the features of the new iPhone, expected to be announced next week, may be a video camera and if so, it joins a growing pack of mobiles to include video-recording capabilities.

Plenty of BlackBerrys — the iPhone's main competitor — can shoot video, including the BlackBerry Storm, Curve 8900 and the Bold 9000. The long-awaited Palm Pre, due to go on sale Saturday, will not include a video cam, according to a company spokeswoman.

The ability to take, not only watch, videos on cell phones is becoming more important as a YouTube generation uses their mobiles to either send short video clips as a multimedia message, or to post them the popular video-sharing site.

"You always have a cell phone on you, and even a Flip (camcorder) is a bit too bulky to carry in your pocket at all times; it generally goes into a bag of some kind," said Avi Greengart, consumer devices research director for Current Analysis.

"The other advantage a cell phone has is built-in connectivity. While a Flip makes sharing or uploading a movie a simple process, you still need to wait until you can dock it with a PC. With a cell phone and a data plan, you can share or upload immediately."

Still, you won't find the kind of image resolution and quality, frames-per-second rate and optical zoom on phone video cameras that you will on dedicated camcorders.

"High-end (video) camera phones top out around 640-by-480 (pixels) at 30 frames per second, but even that is still quite rare, and none have optical zoom or high-quality glass lenses," he said. "At the other extreme, high-end camcorders can take high-definition digital video good enough for a low budget Hollywood film."

In general, a guide to resolution numbers, according to Greengart: "320-by-240 is roughly VHS resolution, 640-by-480 starts to approach DVD resolution and 720-by-480 — often called “high definition” for video-recording purposes — is equivalent to widescreen DVD," with true high-definition TV being either 1280-by-720 or 1920-by-1080.

"If you’re recording for YouTube, 320-by-240 is fuzzy but quite common, and 640-by-480 is more than sufficient," he said. "If you’re recording for playback on an HDTV, anything less than 720-by-480 will look blocky or blotchy."

Storage, too, is another issue, with video files taking up lots of room, which can become a precious commodity on a mobile phone.

"On a phone you might want to use a chunk of that memory card for music, photos, contacts, or applications, while the camcorder is used mostly just for video," Greengart said.

"And then there’s battery life: at the end of the day, if your camcorder battery runs out in the middle of nowhere, you can still use your phone to call a cab. If your video recording session drains the battery on your cell phone, you’re stuck without a phone."

But for those who want to leave the full-featured camcorder, or even the Flip, at home, there are some phones that can do the job when it comes to video, as long as you don't mind compromises.

Here's a look at some of them:

Nokia N96. This may be one of the premier cell phones for video recording, and perhaps one of the most expensive, at $579, as priced recently at Nokia's Web site. (The phone is sold by Nokia in the United States as "unlocked," without a wireless carrier contract and without a subsidy on the phone's cost.)

The N96 provides digital image stablization for video recording — a great idea when you're shooting video with a device weighing only 4.5 ounces. Also unusual is the N96's video settings for scene, light, white balance and color tone. The phone, which includes a 5-megapixel camera, has a dual LED camera flash and video light.

The phone comes with 16 gigabytes of internal memory, and another 8 GB can be added with a microSD card. It has a 2.8-inch display screen. Up to 90 minutes of video can be recorded, depending on resolution.

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