Hi y’all – I’ve been offline for a few days, dealing with the very recent arrival of our (and by that I mean my wife and I, not the IntoMobile team!) second baby – a bonnie little boy! Suffice to the say these last days have been quite interesting from an emotional, sleep, and general energy level perspective!
Any of you that were reading my posts shortly after joining IntoMobile will know that I have written some posts on Babies and Mobiles – specifically, the benefits (or not) that having a Mobile device can lend to one of the most important events of your life, should you choose that path! The first post I wrote on this was about the image quality on cameraphones being CACK – it was a smartphone toting a 5MP camera that was the culprit of producing some poor shots of my (then) little ‘un.
18 months on, and with the arrival of our second, things have changed radically – not just in terms of image quality, but general mobile usage. In fact, knowing image quality often isn’t great on Mobiles, I brought with me a 7.2MP dedicated digi-camera, plus an HD video camcorder – oh yes, I was prepared this time. And before I continue, I should caveat the Mobile I had with me – an iPhone 3G, running OS 3.0….
So was it better this time with the arrival of our second? Well yes, I was calmer, plus my tech was chomping at the bit ready to record his first movements! The fact I had image and video on dedicated devices left me some confidence that I could record his first moment in genuinely better quality that for our first. In the event though, I decided to give the 2MP iPhone camera a go too, purely out of interest – and I surprised myself because it did a good job!
Let’s just recap – no flash, no focus as such, and only 2MP – yet perfectly serviceable quality – certainly good enough to email and MMS to people (yes, using the new MMS feature on the iPhone, working nicely!). In fact, in terms of general perceptible quality, I’d say certainly as good as the (unnamed) 5MP smartphone…. hmm….the MP count ain’t always the deciding factor with digital imaging!
The dedicated devices took the heavy lifting duties – HD video and HQ pix are now stored and ready to be added to a growing mountain as time goes on. The little chap is more animated by the day, and I’m sure pix opportunities will abound over the next few months! But what did I think were the key differences now compared to 18 months ago for MY mobile usage:
- the iPhone 3G dropped (and I got one) – made a huge difference to my ease of mobile use – I actually enjoy it’s UI!
- Email-handling better than on previous devices (again the iPhone)
- all devices retaining battery charge well (evidence of high capacity LI-Ion batteries….)
- video capture of ‘mobile’ (portable) devices incrementally better
- device media sync is better – can you say ‘YouTube upload’ – I can, in one click!!!
Anyone that has a baby on the way, and loves their tech – have a real think about capturing your loved one’s first moments – you don’t want a grainy image or stuttery video as the first recorded memories you have – get that device strategy in place!
Ben 🙂