Camera Phone Reviews

Engadget reports that the LG F9200, a messaging phone that sports a VGA camera, is now available at Cingular. The phone features a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Price is $99 with a two-year contract.

LG F9200 Reviews

PCWorld reviews the LG F9200 and comments, "I particularly like its simple design and user-friendly keyboard. At 4.7 ounces, it's light and easy to carry, although it's chunkier than I'd prefer. It comes in an eggshell white finish with silver numeric keys. The 128-by-160-pixel screen is bright enough in most settings, but its slight graininess was bothersome. The hidden keyboard slides out in a horizontal orientation; when you slide out the keyboard, the display automatically changes to landscape mode. The F9200 also has a built-in 640-by-480 VGA camera."

CNET reviews the LG F9200, and isn't, of course, very impressed with the phone's VGA camera, but finds that the additional camera features that are thrown in aren't bad at all. "Another nice feature is that it lets you check the remaining phone memory to gauge how many more pictures you can take. This is a good thing, since the phone comes with a paltry 8K of memory and doesn't have an expanded memory slot. For a VGA camera, photo quality was solid; although pictures were a bit dark, image definition was sharp, and color quality was acceptable."

Mobiledia reviews the LG F9200 and finds that its lack of connectivity, and imaging and audio options makes for a device that's not particularly well-rounded. Basically, the LG F9200 targets users who require robust instant messaging features.

About the LG F9200's VGA camera, the review notes, "The F9200's built-in camera is meant to complement the multimedia messaging capabilities rather than used to capture photos for print. Ideal to snap that unexpected moment and attach it to a text message to friends, consumers shouldn't except much more from the F9200's outdated VGA camera. Typically a 1.3-megapixel camera is the minimum for printable photos. As camera phones are progressing past 2-megapixels, the F9200 is definitely behind current mobile imaging advancements."

Infosync reviews the LG F9200, and is vastly unimpressed with the phone's VGA camera: "The phone’s VGA camera didn’t exactly wow us. With resolutions ranging from 640 by 480 to 160 by 120 pixels, the camera boasts a series of white balance and brightness controls, plus some image effects (just sepia, monochrome, and standard color), a three- and 10-second self-timer, a three-shot rapid-fire mode, a 4X zoom for resolutions below full VGA. That’s all well and good, but our snapshots looked disappointingly soft and washed out, even for a VGA cameraphone. Trust us, you won’t be saving these pictures in your scrapbook. "

From the news release:

Today LG Electronics MobileComm U.S.A. (LG Mobile Phones) introduced the new F9200 handset for Cingular Wireless, designed to provide users with personal messaging - Mobile Email, MMS and IM - and camera functions all in one fashionable device.

The F9200 mimics the ease of use found in a standard keyboard with an intuitive slide-out, fully functional QWERTY keyboard, allowing for ease of use when using e-mail and instant messaging functionalities. The F9200 integrates with Cingular's Mobile Email (supporting Yahoo(R), Hotmail(R), and AOL(R) e-mail), allowing the user to register up to ten different e-mail accounts. The Instant Messaging functions (enabling AOL(R) Instant Messenger(TM), Yahoo!(R) Messenger, and ICQ(R)) and allow for up to ten open conversations, and the multimedia messaging service allows users to send and receive messages comprised of a combination of text, sound and images.