1.3 Megapixel Camera Phone on Sale

Japan's DoCoMo says that it will begin marketing the mova SO505i, the world's first camera phone equipped with a 1.3-megapixel (effective resolution) CCD camera from the middle of this week. This is the second model in the new 505i series of enhanced-2G i-mode handsets. Equipped with a Macromedia Flash browser, 505i series handsets can access a broad range of rich content and applications with highly fluid animation.

The SO505i offers a unique design for a mobile phone. Once unfolded, the screen-half can be rotated 180 degrees to sit on top of the phone's lower half, thereby halving the phone's length, but leaving the screen facing up. Buttons just below the screen enable the user to make calls, check e-mail and even browse websites with the handset "closed."

The SO505i comes with a 16x digital zoom camera and 2.2-inch semi-transparent, 262,144-color TFT screen. Extra-high resolution makes the SO505i ideal for enjoying photos sent with DoCoMo's i-shot(tm) picture messaging service. SO505i photos can be printed out with a resolution of 1.23 megapixels.

The phone shoots video clips at 5 frames/second and up 6.4 seconds in length. The external storage slot accepts the Memory Stick Duo, which can hold up to about 985 photos saved in the i-shot small-size format."

Posted to the site on 3rd June 2003