Upgrading to Sexier, Touchier Handy Mate

If guys could have girlfriends like having the cellphones - extension of our hands to accomplish many things, and completely upgradable to new sexier, even irresistible version.

Three or four years ago, we were all happy with 2-megapixel cameras embedded into our phones--it was enough to get a pretty good picture, record a VGA-resolution movie, basically capture moments you'd otherwise never photograph because you take your cellphone to more places than your camera. But then the megapixel count began to creep higher.

There was the 5-megapixel LG KG920 and Sony Ericsson K850. Samsung's SCH-V770 pushed the figure to 7. Some kind of barrier was then broken and over the last year or so there was a flurry of 8-megapixel devices: the Sony Ericsson C905, the LG KC780 and KC910, the Samsung SPH-V8200--which was reportedly the first--and many others.

How many of us print out our pictures bigger than a standard letter-sized piece of paper? For that, you need only around a 6- to 7-megapixel image for that task--anything higher adds detail you will never see. For the standard 6 x 4-inch photo, about 5-megapixels will do. And that's just printing them out: To show photos on the HDTVs now beginning to grace Malaysians' homes, you need a maximum of 2.1-megapixels, and the average digital photoframe will do VGA resolution--that's 640 x 480, or only 0.3-megapixels.

And now 12-megapixel phones are here!

An an iPhone 4G that's not an Apple iPhone. It has an interesting, if excessive-sounding 12-megapixel camera there, looking like a super-slim pocket digital cam. It's powerful too, with masterpiece Schneider-Kreuznach optics, autofocus and a 3200 ISO rating. It's also got a proper xenon flash. And it records video in 720p HD. It's too iPhoney.

The handset comes complete with a new feature dubbed Intellizoom. Other camera stuff include ISO up to 3200, camera images geo-tagging and zero shutter lag, which presumably means images will be taken as fast as with a dedicated digital camera.

LG GC990 specs include:

• 3.2 inch touchscreen display with 16 million colors and unknown resolution
• S-Class Touch UI
• Accelerometer for UI auto-rotate
• Wi-Fi with DLNA
• GPS and A-GPS
• Bluetooth
• Wi-Fi with DLNA,
• camera images geo-tagging and zero shutter lag, which presumably means images will be taken as fast as with a dedicated digital camera
• TV-out
• DivX and Xvid video formats support.

LG GC990 Louvre's 12.1MP camera features autofocus, plus:

• Schneider Kreuznach lens
• ISO up to 3200
• Xenon flash
• Intellizoom and Touch Focus
• HD (1280 x 720 pixels) video recording at 30fps

Manufacturers should instead, spend all that R&D money improving the optics, autofocus and flash on the poor-performing models we already have, and let us buy a cellphone that takes great photos, irrespective of how many pixels it has.

And guys can stick to a single girlfriend without having to change to a new upgraded version.