I know we sometimes criticise cellphones for having crappy digital zooms rather than nice, quality-preserving optical ones, but this is perhaps bordering on the ridiculous.  Green-House has announced their 8x optical zoom cellphone accessory, which consists of a universal handset holder, a little tripod and a whopping great lens.  continued »

According to a poster over at the esato forums, a trusted Nokia rep has confirmed that the flagship N96 cellphone is yet to be signed off by management and will gain a Xenon flash (replacing the LED flash the N96 we played with at MWC had) by the time it launches in Q3 this year. "Ok, this isn't official news, but ... continued »

The mean streets of New South Wales (NSW), Australia, may soon be policed by its own citizens, if an AU$8m scheme inviting cameraphone evidence of crimes gets the go-ahead from the government.  Called Project VIEW (Video Image Evidence on the Web), it would consist of a website to which video and images of criminal activity could be submitted for consideration ... continued »

Hooking up a cellphone to a wireless CCTV camera is a nice idea, but you'd have to be pretty paranoid (and sedentary, for that matter) to want this Sang Da SD999; running Windows Mobile, the smartphone connects to a remote CMOS camera with IR illumination for night-vision, but apparently the real-world range is only about 10 meters (even the official ... continued »

When is an iPhone not an iPhone?  When it's a spirit-level, of course; at least, that's the latest way to repurpose your $399+ wunderphone.  Photographer Ben Long was seemingly staging a ghetto photoshoot but lacked a level to make sure his camera was straight.  Thankfully he'd had the foresight to Jailbreak his iPhone, load iLevel - which taps into the ... continued »

Samsung are stepping up to the cameraphone challenge with a new 8-megapixel CMOS chip that the company expects to see in high-end handsets by the second half of 2008.  Easily besting Kodak's latest 5-megapixel sensor, on paper at least, the 8.5mm thick unit also packs anti-shake, smile-recognition, face-tracking and a macro mode capable of shots just 1cm distance from an object (or tiny person). continued »

Subscribing to the "short and dumpy" school of design, Lysandre Follet's Motorola concept is notable for its so-called stereo camera which presumably captures 3D images (or particularly wide-aspect panoramas, perhaps).  Borrowing the big M's design language, the handset resembles a Q smartphone crossed with Samsung's P310, dropping the former's QWERTY thumbboard in favour of some chunky numerics.   continued »

There have been a time or two where I had wished my iPhone-supported dual-SIM, which is what the DSTW1 offers. It works on quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz) and other tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900MHz). If Windows Mobile Professional is your thing then rest assure the oddly named DSTW1 smartphone has it. continued »

Researchers at Stanford University have developed an innovative camera lens that captures depth perception in each shot.  The system, called multi-aperture, uses a 3-megapixel sensor to capture 16x16 pixel squares called subarrays, each slightly overlapping; image processing then analyses the pixel location differences between subarrays to work out the relative distance between objects in the photo.  At present the 3D information ... continued »

Nokia's official S60 Multimedia Blog reveals that a geotagging upgrade for the N82 will be released this quarter, as part of the next firmware release.  Geotagging, which stores the location an image was taken at in the picture file's metadata, takes advantage of the N82's camera and GPS receiver; images can then be uploaded to compatible online galleries (such as ... continued »