A more usable Camera Phone Technology?

MMS hasn't taken off as the mobile phone market hoped and now a service running on GPRS, rather than 3G, is undermining the services further.

In contrast to MMS, megapixel cameras can capture photos that are high enough quality to produce desirable 6 x 4 inch (10 x 15 cm) prints. Megapixel photos are also much bigger files - typically a megapixel photo will take up 300 kilobytes of data - that is around 10 times the size of a photo from the current camera-phones on the market.

However, tests suggest that the benefit to the user makes this technology more likely to be used. A major UK network operator completed a 6-week consumer trial of the Cognima Snap service, which uses megapixel technology, in June. Trial participants uploaded photos from their handsets into the operator's online photo album.

620 consumer participants from several market segments signed up to the trial. 173 participants used Cognima-enabled handsets, enabling them to upload photos to the online photo album using the Cognima Snap service. The remaining 447 participants uploaded photos by sending MMS messages to a short code number.

The number of Cognima Snap uploads per user was 14 times higher than standard MMS uploads and 72% of Cognima Snap trial participants became regular users (continuing to use the service after the first two-weeks of the trial); the equivalent figure for standard MMS users was 18%. Cognima Snap users made more than twice as many visits as standard MMS users to the online photo album during the trial, and made greater use of the album services (eg MMS messages sent from the online album to other phones).

Traditionally, one of the only ways users have been able upload their images to a web portal is by using MMS. However MMS was designed for peer-to-peer photo messaging and so the size of files it can handle are restricted. Some networks can only handle MMS files of around 30 kilobytes. This means camera-phones need to compress photos down to 30 kilobytes before they are sent - thus removing the quality of the megapixel image.

As the Register news service comments of using MMS: 'if people go to the bother of sending the picture to someone, they're expecting that person to look at it on something bigger than a cameraphone. It will arrive at the other end big enough to print on a full A4 sheet of paper - and if it looks good enough to send, it will probably be tempting to do so.

'The result is total disappointment. Nobody who did this would do it again. Instead, you would see what we see in the market: people pulling their phones out, and showing the day's pictures to friends in the pub - but never, ever, transmitting them to Granny, or posting them on their blogs.'

Associated Link: See The Register perspective

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