Florida want great camera phone~Cingy

[!..dip it low..!]

Live in the Tampa area and want a great camera phone. I have read about the Sony 790a but that is triband and don't know if that is a good idea. Plus I am not a modder and will have to find some one to mod for me so I can use all the Cingular services. Do I buy a 3.2 mp sony unlocked or try to find something already branded to Cingy? Does the W810I take a decent pic and have auto focus or do I go for a 3.2? Are there other options besides Sony E that have really good cameras? Help, my Wife wants a good phone to take high quality pictures and be able to send picture messages.

Thanks for your help all!

[baby gurl..xx]

if all else go to the cingular store and try out the cameras SE usually has the best cameras.

[Juliet L]

Few things....

1-The SE 790a should work fine for Cingular. It has the 850/1900 bands. Don't know how the lack of the 900 band will affect you in the U.S. I think it will only be an issue if you travel abroad. It does have an awesome camera (based on plenty of reviews).

2-There are no modifications needed to make it work on Cingular's network. You may not even need to set it up for the SMS/MMS/Web sessions (not sure here). If you have a recent SIM card (~1-2 years) it should read the settings from the SIM card. Not sure on the SE phones, but that's how it works on my Nokia N73. Even if you do have to put the web and SMS sessions into the phone....it's no harder than typing a text message. Sometimes a bit challenging to find the right menu though...

3-Now....one thing I've heard but not confirmed....is that if you are using a non Cingular branded phone...and sending MMS messages (images/video or multimedia messages)....Cingular automatically resizes images/video sent to/from that unbranded device to be very small. Check the Cingular forums, several threads on this. One way around this is to take the pictures or videos with the phone, load/transfer them up on your desktop, and then use your regular email to send them. This is what I do sending pics of the grandkids to my parents (they don't have data plans on their cell phones).

4-You may also look into the N73 (sorry, a bit of a fanboy, I love this phone). I just got one back in December. The only other phone I was considering was the k790a that you are looking at. Several reviews put the two cameras between the N73 and k790a very close to each other in terms of quality-the only ding on the N73 is the low light capability. I went with the N73 because it runs the Symbian OS, previous positive experiences with Nokia phones, and I like to play with all the extra features/software that goes with that OS. My wife had a SE before I gave her the Moto v635 (my previous phone before the N73). I really never got comfortable with the SE user interface, but many like it.

HTH.

[Joey_611]

get the k790a period

[The_World_Is_Mine]

If my sim card is 3 years old can go to Cingular and get an updated card? This card is on it's second phone now and will be going to it's 3rd. I am sure Cingy will charge some rediculous fee for a card update.

[nighttrain57]

I just got the latest Cingular 3g SIM card on eBay for less than $10 delivered. Haven't activated it yet though....just got it last Friday.

Cingular will be more than double that....but, you might get lucky and get a new one for free (I've never been able to).

You also get a new one if you get a new phone from them...

If you go the eBay route, be absolutely sure that the card has the newer 3G 'fireball' logo on it. Otherwise, it's not the latest card. At least, that's from my research here on HoFo about Cingular 3G SIM cards from a week or so ago when I bought mine.

HTH.

[FFSloan]

i thought 64k sims were enough to have 3G

[Mimi-????????????- ??????????????]

I'm no SIM card expert...just regurgitating what I've read in the Cingular forum....so my information may be incorrect based on that!

[*Shannon*]

Is the W810I camera even close to the K790a or is the 790 just far superior to the 810?

[cchabla]

it is far superior to the w810, esp for night pics - but coming to 4X6 prints they come close to each other