The Site With the Lamp

December 6, 2006

My faithfull old Siemens S55 is dead. It became sick a few weeks ago when it was splashed while at the beach. Then last week one of the keys got stuck and the phone stopped responding. In my attempt to make the key 'un stuck' the whole phone came unstuck.

Unfortunatley siemens doesn't make phones any more I don't want to buy a sheep (Benq) in wolf's (siemens) clothing and pay the price of a wolf. So I reluctantly decided to buy a Nokia.

At first I was taken up by the Nokia N93 but sanity prevailed. What I found attractive was the video capabilities of the phone. But then having a 30 fps camera is no good because it's still a phone camera with a lens that's smaller than a pea Much better to buy a cheap phone and a good Sony camera.

Since dialog has started their 3G services, it's essential that the phone should be 3G. Contrary to what dialog and nokia would have us believe 3G is not all about video conferencing. So I don't want to buy phone that claims to be able to shoot a 3 or 4 mega pixel camera. Worse still I don't want a phone with two cameras.

The quality of the lens and it's size make it impossible for such a camera to produce good results. Even a very good lens can be totally messed up by one spec of dust. Heck if a DSLR can be effected by dust what chance does a phone camera with a lens that's only slightly bigger than spec of dust have? Dust on a DSLR lense can be cleaned off, it's the dust on the sensor that causes trouble. Interestingly, good old film cameras don't have this problem. I am straying off topic.

The Nokia 6151 seems to be the cheapest model that has CLDC 1.1, MIDP 2.0 and WCDMA. The price is low because it's camera is only 1.3 mega pixel. That's the same as the camera on the 6630. With December 03, being my birthday, I persuaded my wife to buy it for me as a birthday present.

btw: IMHO: the daylight mixing with the incandescent light adds a nice touch to that photo, it's only enhanced by the camera light. Feel free to disagree.