New Phone

Arrianou, Thessaloniki

Sometimes when you are tech geek, you get yearnings for more gadgets. I’m sure you all know me well enough to know that I fall into this category of people and now is no different. I have decided that I am going to get a new cell phone. The one I have now works great, but it lacks certain geeky features that I am starting to look for. The primary feature I am requiring is Bluetooth. My laptop has it built-in and I am looking to see in which ways I can take advantage of that. One of primary motivating factors in all of this is the desire to start uploading more photos, but not necessarily large batches of sought out shots – more random and indicative shots of my daily life.

To this end, I also am looking for a phone with a camera. With the camera and bluetooth combo, I am hoping that I will be inclined to develop a small workflow that will allow me to upload my photos with captions to this site without a lot of intermediate effort. Uploading my shots from the Canon has gotten very simple and smooth, but I’m hoping that this will be even easier without the requirement of connecting anything to my computer. I’m not going to stop using the Canon because of this – I love that camera, but it isn’t convenient to bring with me everywhere. And the word subtle is not a word the Canon understands. My only real hang up about this is that the camera on these phones tend to top out at VGA resolution (640x480) and that’s not much of a photo in my books. Oh, that and I have to make sure that the phone will work fine in Spain (I will likely use Vodaphone in Spain as I do now – but this is something else to think about.) The current phone I’m looking at is the Motorola V360v, which is a nice looking flip phone with camera and bluetooth. It is a Vodaphone phone and so should be good at least while I’m in Europe. I’m going to stop by the Nokia store today to see if they have anything that tickles my fancy. If anyone has any recommendations, drop me a comment.

The other side to this whole coin is to get a small, relatively cheap digital camera. One that will fit in my pocket and will be more useful with impromptu photo taking. For only a little more than the V360v I can get a 6 megapixel Olympus Camedia FE-120. It is pretty small – not as small as a phone – but it does take photos that have 20 times the number of pixels. And in today’s society, pixels are king. The main caveat? No bluetooth. At least not without spending more than I want to. So that is my dilemma at the moment. Please comment with your opinions on this matter.

Written by Colin Bate