Latest Mobiles

The world of camera phones has just gotten to a billet more interesting with a Chinese company called Altek who have designed their first ever 12 megapixel camera phone. While that my not seem impressive because the 12.2MP resolution is slowing becoming the new 8MP, this particular handset takes things up a notch by also incorporating 3X optical zoom making it a World’s first.



The Huajing Altek Company’s original focus has been in the manufacturing of digital imaging technology. They have now decided to also focus on R & D and manufacturing of the same idea but by incorporating the same into other applications and products like the mobile handset, which only makes sense. Their offering in the Altek T8680 is what the industry could call a "professional video phone”. It’s been designed to work just like a digicam and process images even in low light conditions as good as any stand alone digital camera. The company has designed a specific image processing chip to help provide users with a better mobile camera experience without cutting into the speed of the device itself.

The T8680 is equipped with -

* a 3.0-inch touchscreen with a 400 x 240 pixel resolution and 260k colors
* handwriting recognition
* FM radio
* EDGE/GPRS
* Bluetooth with A2DP
* microSD card support
* TV Out

Thanks to the camera’s 3x optical zoom lens, with an adjustable aperture size setting so users can make the background blurred and focus on any specific object for a better depth of field image. The Altek T8680 also uses a CCD sensor to allow for higher sensitivity and lower noise in dark environments to help capture more light. Other camera features include –

* Scene modes
* Face Detection, Smile Shutter, auto stitch Panorama, burst mode for consecutive images (up to 16)
* Image editing with an application for leaving Voice Notes
* ISO settings
* White Balance
* Timer, Exposure
* Video recording in AVI

Micromax tried incorporating a 3X optical zoom lens onto their 8 megapixel camera phone the X800 so this concept has been tried before. What instantly comes to mind though is the kind of weight this handset would have as the X800 was an extremely bulky device. The T8680, weighs in at about 135g and has dimension of 113.5 x 52.0 x 16.55mm which doesn’t seem too bad.

The handset is expected to be released sometime at the end of this month or in September. The approximate pricing is said to be around Rs. 22,000. There’s no word on it’s launch in India so we’ll have to wait and see. The real question is weather the T8680 could give Sony Ericsson and Samsung's offerings a run for their money? Stay tuned.