Cell Phone Camera Road Test: Pantech Crossover
How well will Pantech Crossover’s camera shoot San Francisco’s most famous urban graffiti murals?
A perfect locale to road test a cell phone camera is the Clarion Alley in the Mission District of San Francisco. An assault on the senses, the colorful murals that dot this block are part of the Clarion Alley project that began back in 1992. The street art exemplifies the urban graffiti aesthetic of San Francisco’s New Mission School.
Today’s Camera Road Test: Pantech Crossover
Camera Stats: It’s a 3 megapixels, backfacing, auto-focus camera with a 4x zoom. Not one of AT&T’s high-end devices, the Pantech Crossover is powered by a 600MHz processor. Despite that, it actually offers a decent photographing experience than one would initially expect. With that said, let’s head towards Clarion Alley and get this Pantech Crossover snapping some photos.
In San Francisco, the walls of buildings are canvases as the city is blazed with world-renowned murals. Graffiti artists such as Banksy, Twist, and Shepard Fairey have made the sides of buildings their focal point for their bold artist statements.
What a perfect arena to test the color saturation of the Crossover.
The camera opens by pressing the dedicated camera button on the home screen. It’s a good thing these murals are stationary; the camera opens a little bit on the slow side: roughly in the 2.5 – 3.0 seconds arena. If you’re in a situation where you need to whip out your camera and snap a quick shot – chances are you might miss it.
With only 3 megapixels, I wasn’t expecting much from the Crossover, but I was pleasantly surprised by the image quality. Color and white balance looked pretty descent, and the exposure was generally accurate.
One annoying thing about the Crossover: once you snap a photo, it doesn’t go back to camera shooting mode; you have to exit from the snapped image to take your next photo. Once again, bad when wanting to shoot quickly on the fly.
The auto-focus really sharpens images; especially when in motion. I took the above image while jumping in the air (people did stare at me) and it captured the details of this tree woman very well.
Here’s a cool feature I liked: you have two options for zoom. You can manually do it with the buttons on the side of the phone, or you can use the touchscreen slider on the interface. Above is Clarion Alley in both phases of zoom. From a long distance, zooming in makes the sort of grainy and you lose detail.
But when closer to the subject, the Crossover picks up descent detail, such as this man with a gun to his head, when zoomed in all the way; though you do lose some color saturation.
Brightness/contrast feature works the same way as the zoom. An interesting feature is the ability to tap the screen to bring up the effects panel. The only problem is the camera doesn’t go back to the default setting after snapping a photo; you have to exit the effect to get back to the original setting. Annoying!
Effect filters are all the rage with camera phones. The Crossover offers mono, sepia, and negative. (How often would you want to use a negative filter?) Again, the annoying part is the camera doesn’t go back to the default setting after taking a photo with a filter. If you’re snapping an event, and need a lot of quick photos, it’s probably best to avoid the filters.
Camera Conclusion: I wasn’t expecting much from the Pantech Crossover, but I ended up pleasantly surprised by one of AT&T’s lower-end cell phones. The main problem is there’re too many extra steps you have to take between settings.
Trigger Happy TV: Annoying Cell Phone Guy goes jogging
Dom Joly shows why we hate people who talk on cell phones while jogging
Wow what a week of events in the world of cell phones. From a lackluster Apple iPhone launch to the passing of one of the true geniuses in the game.
So as a little palate cleanser, here’s Dom Joly and a classic clip from Trigger Happy TV. How this all fits in is Joly’s loveable/hateable character: Annoying Cell Phone Guy?
ACPG teaches everyone a little lesson in jogging cell phone etiquette. Watch the clip as he literally scares the bejeebies at of a pair of female joggers – as he screams into his much oversized cell phone. The funny bit is after Joly scares the women, he keeps running after them (and talking loudly).
Oh Annoying Cell Phone Guy: how you never cease to make me laugh!
Cell phones don’t fly in U.S. prisons
California prisons are cracking down on illegal cell phones
A while back, KYC reported that in a pilot scheme in the UK, some prisoners could be offered the opportunity to have cells installed in their cells – that’s right convicts might be allowed to use cell phones in prison. Why? To allow prisoners time to communicate with their friends, family, and lawyers. More importantly: to cut down on security risks when involving numerous prisoners hanging around the communal phone.
That’s how things roll in Great Britian.
It’s a different story here in the U.S. In California, Gov. Jerry Brown announced Thursday that it’s now illegal for prison employees and non-prison employees to smuggle in cell phones to inmates.
The reason being?
According to the governor, contraband cellphones help prisoners expand their criminal networks from behind bars. (That next gangland shooting could be on speed dial.) Right now in the California, thousands of prisoners – including infamous crazyman Charles Manson – have contraband cell phones. Charles Manson, by the way, has a swastika carved into his forehead – amongst other problems.
This man has a cell phone
Gov. Jerry Brown also ordered prison guards to crack down on illegal prison cell phone possession. So what will happen to prisoners, in prison, who get caught with a cell phone – in prison? They could lose early release credits up to 180 days. (Not much of a punishment if you’re serving consecutive life sentences.) Corrections employees or visitors who try to smuggle mobile devices into state prisons could face up to six months in prison and fines of up to $ 5,000. How ironic, if you’re a visitor who tries to smuggle a cell phone into prison – you just end up staying there.
In the past, prisoners have used social networking sites from their mobile devices to post threatening messages to victims and their families or coordinate assaults and escapes. (I’d imagine these wouldn’t get many “Likes” on Facebook.) Last year, Prison officials seized nearly 11,000 cellphones smuggled in by prison guards and corrections employees.
It would be curious to see what is the most popular cell phone to be smuggled into a prison. Would it be an iPhone or an Andriod? Which phone gets better prison coverage?
Have you ever been to prison and used a cell phone. KYC wants to know!
Cell phone privacy–a cautionary tale
The ACLU released a document this week that showed how long cell phone providers keep your call information on record
Picture this: the telephone in a shop rings – not a cell phone – a telephone. (Like the old timey ones that used to hang on the wall with really long cords) A clerk answers the telephone.
A voice on the other end of the line squeaks, “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?” The clerk hurriedly checks the shelves. He find that, yes, they do stock Prince Albert tobacco stored in an air tight metal container. The clerk answers “Yes, we do”.
With barely stifled giggles, the voice on the other end of the line yells: “Then why don’t you let him out?!! He can’t breathe!!”
Aaahh, the childish pranks of yesteryear. Remember how much fun prank calls were? Sure, they were illegal, but they were fun. Best of all, you could get away with them.
Enter the cell phone.
Sure, you can play mobile games on the cell phone. You can make movies. You can even download an app that turns your phone into a flashlight. But what your cell phone won’t let you do is make anonymous prank calls. Because even if you’re using an app to block your number from other cell phone users–what you can’t block is your number from your carrier.
This is where it gets scary.
On September 28, the American Civil Liberties Union (the organization that the original George Bush made fun of, remember), released a document that showed EXACTLY how long cell phone providers kept your information on record. That information can come back to haunt you.
Remember that sexting session you had? Guess how long those text messages are kept? You’re lucky if you carrier is Verizon because they only keep the content of text messages between three and five days. However, if you’re with Virgin–be careful who you sext; Virgin keeps content of text messages for up to 90 DAYS.
Big deal, you say, so the carrier keeps text messages for a few days. So what, right? How about the numbers that you call? Want to take a stab in the dark at how long that information is on file? Put it this way, if someone gave you an AT&T/Cingular cell phone as a present for college, by the time you graduated, 4 years later, AT&T would STILL have a record of all your booty calls from your freshman year. (Those booty calls could come back and bite you in the ass!)
The other scary piece of information that providers are keeping is the cell towers that you used when you made your calls. This information can pinpoint the exact area that you were in; almost down to the street level. In the case of Sprint and Nextel, this information is kept on file for up to two years.
Just remember that the next time you start asking for Prince Albert–it could come back to haunt you!
Categories: Mobile News Tags: cautionary, cell, Phone, privacya, Tale
Samsung plans to introduce the world’s first flexible cell phone next year
Imagine a phone you can wear around your wrist–and it tells time!
How many times have you ever thought to yourself, “I wish I had some type of device that I could wrap around my wrist and would give me the time of day at a glance.” Have no worries, loyal KYC readers–that day is not too far in the future!
Rumors have been floating around that Samsung is set to launch the Samsung Galaxy Skin in 2012. This smartphone is going to have all the latest features – 8 megapixel camera for photos, a VGA camera for videoconferencing, 1GB of RAM, a 1.2GHz processor, and it will feature models with both 16 and 32GB hard drives.
But what really sets the phone apart is that it’s dual punch of AMOLED display and the body constructed of graphene. Talk about the future!
Short for Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode, AMOLED displays are built to be flexible. You can bend these babies around without doing any kind of damage to the display whatsoever. Graphine, likewise, has been touted as one of the most durable materials ever and will soon be seen in more and more cell phones.
All this newfangled technology lead Samsung to the obvious conclusion: “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we made a cell phone that looked like it belonged in a Dali painting!” Just take a look at some of the AMOLED gadgets on display at the most recent Consumer Electronic Show:
So put a AMOLED screen together with a graphene constructed cell phone body and you get a flexible smart phone that you can wear around your wrist. And get this: among other things it will give you the time. The more things change, the more things stay the same.
Personally, what I’m waiting for is a cell phone that you can wear at the end of a pocket chain. Even better, you could pull the phone out of your pocket every once in a while and start an app that would let you wind up the phone virtually. Dammit! Looks like someone’s already beat me to it:
Except my app would be more lifelike. If you forget to wind the phone, it would eventually slow down and no longer tell the correct time; or let you take Fat Face photos.
