As most of you may know, the one thing that kills me about being a big fan of my iPhone, is the weak camera… especially for what I demand in a camera phone.  After all, taking snaps with my camera phone, is what got me so interested in mobiles in the first place.  And with today’s announcement of the iPhone 3GS at the WWDC,  Apple has given my me my much lusted-for camera upgrade.

Almost.

The new iPhone 3GS camera:

- 3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus
- Auto exposure, auto white balance, low light and macro mode
- 640×480 @ 30 frames/sec… with auto focus, auto white balance, auto exposure
- On-phone basic video editing, with direct sharing features via MMS, email, YouTube and MobileMe

The bitter part?  They didn’t include a dang photo light or flash.

Sure… the improved camera module is told to be better in low-light conditions.  But come on now.  Seriously.

BUT.  I’m hooked on this damn phone.  So I’ll take what I can get. 

Auto-focus on the cam is lovely. And VGA video @ 30fps with focus is as good as I could expect for video - and a DANG nice good start to adding video to the iPhone.  If only they matched that leap from zero to hero, with the still cam…

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Let’s face it.  Compared to every other handset out there, Apple was the first to make browsing the web truly usable on a mobile phone.  Say what you will about the evils of the iPhone, but the fact is it’s been 2 years and so far, every other handset manufacturer still isn’t matching the experience you get using mobile Safari.  And regardless what individual preference you or I might have, the numbers are hard – in even progressive mobile markets in Europe, less than 11% of the general mobile population use their handsets to regularly access the web.  Sure, 33% of smartphone are jumping online, but a whopping 80% of iPhone users are regularly browsing the web. 

Apple is doing it right.

A couple months back, I had a thought while in the shower (watch my nerdiness in full disclosure during this confession!) about how Apple might introduce real mobile photography for the iPhone.  Not how *I* would do i… not how others would like them to, and not how other manufacturers would.  But how the evil genius Apple would do it.  IF they do it.

What they WON’T do, is have a spec race.  There won’t be a 8 megapixel camera in the new iPhone.  I’d love it, but that’s not their style.

What they WILL do – if they do anything at all – is launch an modestly improved camera in the new iPhone, with an unsurpassed offering of integration with their own software and with third party services.  An ecosystem for a camera phone, like they made an ecosystem for a portable music player.

Apple has neglected incremental improvements to the camera, and I think it’s in an effort to launch an “experience” for mobile photography in an upcoming version. 

Well, we know MMS is coming with the 3.0 software.  And UI spy shots of the 3.0 beta software seem to also confirm some video recording capabilities.  But I don’t think they’ll stop there – that’s old tech.  MMS-only camera phones are old school. 

I can see hard partnerships with Flickr, and especially YouTube.  I’m thinking that if they positioned it right, the iPhone could launch a new YouTube SERVICE, even (YouTube Live, anyone?). 

Imagine being able to take a video with your iPhone, edit the video on-device, and post to YouTube and Facebook.  Sure, this functionality is present on other devices (like Nokia N Series) now… but the experience is disjointed and a bit lengthy.  So much so, that it’s just not worth it.  The process  needs a full ecosystem to support it  – like iTunes supports digital music for the masses, and the App Store supports third party mobile software by providing a no-brainer channel onto every iPhone.  THIS is Apple’s strength.

And of course, beyond third party stuff, I’d expect improved iPhoto and iMove integration, with the possibility of tiny mobile versions of those apps on your iPhone (that will develop over time).  It’s less likely that iChat for the iPhone would debut, unless Apple has been working over the last two years to deal with both significant hardware additions (a secondary front-facing camera) and negotiating data issues with carriers to launch such a data-taxing service. 

But one can dream.  Or at least daydream in the shower.

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The world finally begin to really see the Samsung Omnia HD in action in Barcelona last month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  And let me say, it’s looking pretty darn slick.

How’s that, you ask?  Let’s start with an 8MP camera, face/smile/blink detection, LED flash, etc.  But that’s not the stunner… this sucker RECORDS 720P HD video.  That’s 1280 x 720 pixels @ 24 frames/sec.  It has a gorgeous 3.7-inch (360×640px) OLED touch-screen that is CAPACITIVE… like the iPhone (most other touch-screen phones are resistive technology).  8/16 GB storage, stereo bluetooth, 3.5 headphone jack… and this sucker supports all the high-res video formats, including DIVX right out of the box.  Nice.

The Samsung Omnia HD is shaping up to be the *real* next generation of camera phones?  It could well be.  No Xenon flash, sadly.  But with that video recording, and that screen… I could be more forgiving.

While I haven’t owned a Samsung phone before, I’ve used many at my work… we have *many* handsets there.  While I’ve never been a huge backer of their old phone UIs – or Windows Mobile, that you’ll find on most of Samsung’s higher end models, recently– the Omnia HD is a breath of fresh air, since it runs the latest and greatest Symbian OS, with Samsungs fancy tweaks on top of it.  Samsung is doing it with the Omnia HD, like we saw Sony Ericsson doing it with the Idou.

Let’s just say, where the iPhones and the Palm Pres don’t excite me, the Omnia does.  It’s looking like a master of content creation… not just consumption..

I’m hoping to get my hands on one in the next month or so – cross your fingers for me.  If I do find my way into one, expect to an extensive review, and some sweet, phone-made HD video and photo content coming from this camera-killer very soon.

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I’ve had people ask me what’s noteworthy in the iPhone 3.0 software announcement, and what I’ve thought about it all… so here’s the opinionated cheat sheet I’ve thrown together.   In the form of a game.

Items towards the top, are the most Cool / Anticipated / Unforgivably-late-but-still-lusted-for.  The ones on the bottom aren’t as easy to get giddy over.  So feel free to read until it gets boring and you fall asleep.  Consider how far you’ve gotten -  before you passed out - to be The Hot List.

And let me know how far that is in the comments.  I’m curious.

- Copy, Cut, and Paste (Jesus. Christ.)
- Stereo Bluetooth (here come the GOOD wireless headphones!)
- Push notifications (for real this time, they swear)
- MMS support (welcome to 2003! I’ve never been so excited about MMS.)
- Emailing multiple images simultaneously (next, make a camera that doesn’t suck)
- Accessory Applications (black sheep of the crew… has huge potential)
- Tethering built in on client side (up to your carrier, now)
- Landscape keyboard in mail, text messaging, etc. (thanks for seeing the light)
- Apps can use maps, enabling turn-by-turn directions (I have to BUY a map app?)
- Peer-to-peer via Bluetooth (might be cool for games… song sharing? No way.)
- Spotlight on home screen searches content on your iPhone (seems rushed…)
- In-App purchaces for subscriptions, new levels of content (clever! $$$)
- New search in big apps, like contacts (*stares blankly*)
- Wi-Fi auto-login (*dozes off*)
- Voice memos (*twitches and wakes self up*)
- Stocks including story ticker (*sits up straight in chair*)
- EAS policies (*ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ*)
- Revoke certs (asklfasjkjkafdsjajksddafsjjk  <— *asleep on keyboard now*)
- Languages
- VPN on demand
- Streaming audio and video APIs
- OTA profiles
- Media scrubber
- Parental controls
- Call log
- Auto-fill
- iTunes login
- iTunes account creation
- Create meeting invites
- Anti-phishing filters
- EAP SIM
- LDAP
- Live streaming
- Audio/video tags
- Encrypted profiles
- YouTube accounts
- YouTube subscriptions
- YouTube ratings
- 1,000 new developer APIs

If you’re still awake, and still interested, you could watch the entire keynote presentation of these features.

THE END

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This video will give you a GREAT idea about what this device is like… probably in too much detail for some folks out there, but for nerds like me… I eat this up.  And as we saw with the iPhone demos/commercials, high-quality touch-screen UIs deserve video demonstrations to get a good idea of how things really work in use.

Rarely do we see such a crisp, in-depth  walkthough of such important devices, until *right* before their release.  This video shows some of the awesome things the Palm Pre is bringing (and even the iPhone 3.0 software won’t be!) like true multi-tasking, unobtrusive notifications, unique hardware gestures, and data-merging between all your contact sources (on-phone, exchange contacts, facebook friends, etc), and true universal search.

The "cards" UI for multitasking, combined with the gestures, really do make the OS feel less like a collection of buttons and bars, and does make the screen focus on the content.  And the clever way of making even the top icons of the screen (battery, signal strength, etc), seem like part of the hardware… another nice touch.

I’ve watched a lot of Palm Pre coverage, but this one was worth sharing.  Even if you don’t want a Pre yourself after the video, you can thank them for lighting a fire under Apple’s seat, in a way that hardware specs couldn’t… in their home-turf of software/UI design.

Pretty awesome stuff.

If you saw today’s news on the iPhone 3.0 software, you can *definitely* thank the Pre for Spotlight being thrown your desktop.  Expect a few more similar features being exposed in the coming months, in time for Apple’s likely iPhone hardware refresh.

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Lordy.

Hot on the tails of the mysterious Nokia marketing gimmick for an upcoming imaging phone, Sony  Ericsson reveals this monster at Mobile World Conference.

Meet the Sony Ericsson Idou (this won’t be her name when she’s brought to market).  Rocking 12.1 megapixels with a Xenon flash, and a 16:9 640×320 pixel touch-screen (please tell me it’s capacitive), to get you started.  Sure, 12.1 megapixels only means so much, since the photo quality from the lens will likely be no better than their 5 and 8 megapixel offerings… unless they have some suprises up their sleeves.

What’s really exciting?  Seeing what this new Symbian Foundation OS could be all about!  Check the video below… don’t believe for a second that it’s fully-baked software running on this phone, but if the example that they’re showing is a sign of what they’ll have later this year… Symbian might just be saved!

My hopes?  That it actually gets released, that the OS is tight and slick, and the sucker records VGA video (at least!  Seeing 12.1 megapixels stills and low-res video on the same phone would be ridiculous).

AND… I wanna see Nokia match this with that imaging handset they’ll hopefully announce this week.

Might 2009 be shaping up to be the year for mobile devices, that 2008 clearly wasn’t?

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