Android Phones get bigger cameras
If your motto is ‘The best camera is the one you have with you” and you have one of a small group of Android smartphones, you may be very close to right, except for your good camera.
How many times have you driven or walked by a situation or a scene which cried out for a photograph, but you didn’t have your camera with you or ready? If it is as many times as that has happened to me, it is many too many. Smartphone manufacturers are building better and better cameras into their devices, so it is becoming easier to have a phone, a GPS, and a decent camera in your pocket all day long. The iPhone already has a decent camera and does a pretty good job for a tiny camera with a 5.1 megabyte capability. Now some of the Android phones are doing that much and more.
There is one Android phone on the market, the Altek Leo A14 that may be more camera than phone. This Altek device looks more like a camera than a phone, but supposedly does both. The manufacturer says it has 14 megapixel capability, 3x zoom, autofocus, and a Xenon flash.
Sony Ericsson also has a contender, something they will probably call the Xperia X10, that also has some reasonable camera specs. It has 8.1 megapixel camera and a 4-inch viewing screen, along with a few other photographic goodies, including autofocus, 16x zoom, image stabilization, and video recording.
While neither of these phones set records for digital cameras, they do have a lot of features built into them for photographers. And, because we do miss so many good shots, the camera in your next phone should play a part in the selection of that phone. All of us are good at remembering our phones, and not quite so good at remembering our cameras. Some of the newer phones are finally beginning to incorporate cameras that would do us all proud in a pinch.
