LG VX6000 error: Too many colors to photograph?

I've been testing Verizon Wireless' LG VX6000 camera phone for almost four months and never have had any major problem with it. On rare occasions it couldn't transmit a photo, but it always worked when I waited a minute or two.

My initial impressions of the VX6000 remain. It's an excellent phone and a nice starter camera phone, but the photo quality is mediocre, as you can see from my LG test photo album.

It's time for me to return the phone, so today I was taking some last minute photos of the season -- pumpkins and leaves changing on the trees. As you can see from the album (see above), the photo quality of these recent photos won't win any prizes; the colors look terrible.

Uh oh, an error message

I saw a photo opportunity -- a tree with pretty leaves and bright red berries, the sort you see on Christmas wreaths. I shot the photo, pressed the "OK" button to save it and....up popped a red "X" in a circle and an error message! The message said, "File exceeds maximum sized allowed to save." I had never gotten an error message.

Hmm. Was the memory full? I didn't think so, but I erased some stored photos in any case. I took the photo again and got the same error message.

I then took a photo of the sidewalk. It was saved. I took a photo of a lamp pole. It was saved. I took a photo of a car. It was saved. I took a photo of a mailbox. It was saved.

I deleted all those photos and took a photo of the tree with the berries. Error message!

I walked around the block taking photos of other subjects. They all were saved. I walked back to the tree with berries, took a photo and got another error message.

Too many colors?

The only thing I can imagine is the combination of red berries and multicolored leaves and sky produced too many colors and created a file that was too large. It sounds ridiculous and shouldn't occur, but why would only that one scene cause an error message?

I called Verizon's customer service and spoke to a support person. She connected me to a supervisor. She had never heard of the problem and would send the details to experts in the company. Since I know wireless data experts in the company, I'm going to make sure I get an answer.

I was shooting all the photos at the highest resolution, 640 x 480. I didn't try shooting at a lower resolution, but that shouldn't matter.

Anyone experience such a problem? If I get an answer from Verizon, I'll certainly post it here.

Comments

[HID Kit]

I recently came across your blog & reading along.Thanks

[Katie]

I have an LG-VX6000 phone, and i have been very satisfied with it's performance. Since i do not like paying all the high costs to customize my phone, i decided i would save picture (small) from the internet, and send then via e-mail to my phone (i tested the file type jpeg by sending a picture from my phone to my email first). I've been successful so far, but recently when i try to save my pictures to my gallery, i get an error message "error saving picture" and i can't. I don't understand why this is happening, and it's really dissapointing. Did you ever hear back on why you couldn't save the berry picture?

[minh]

I have an LG vx6000. when I take a picture and save it it's very clear but when I send it to myself it looks fuzzy. i went to a verizon store and had it replaced but the same thing happens with the new phone!!!! i know it's the phone because i have tested the following:

1. took a clear picture and saved it.
2. i was sending a picture/text and then i chose the above picture to insert in the message
3. i hit the preview option and the picture was fuzzy.

so it appears that the picture is fuzzy even before i send it out.

has anyone seen this problem before?

resolution pixel is the highest and the file quality is the highest as well. Thank you.

[RICHARD]

HI ALAN REITER,
I'M NEW TO THE CAMERA PHONE STUFF AND AM WONDERING WHAT YOUR ADVICE IS FOR ME. I'M HARD OF HEARING SO I NEED A PHONE WITH A HIGHER VOLUME CONTROL. ALSO, I HAVE A TEENAGE DAUGHTER WHO NEEDS TO BE ABLE TO TAKE EXCELLENT PHOTOS AS WELL AS CHATTING WITH FRIENDS. ALSO, I'M PLANNING A YEAR TRIP TO JAPAN AND NEED INTERNATIONAL CALLING THAT IS CLEAR ALL THE WAY BACK TO MIAMI, FLORIDA. AND AT A DECENT PRICE AS I'M NOT RICH. ANY SUGGESTIONS?

[Elan Dekel]

Thats funny. If you look at the file sizes of a JPEG image with lots of details and compare them to images with less details, you will notice that the detailed one is larger. Most compression schemes do this. But its funny that the phone manufacturer didnt take this into account.

[Alan A. Reiter]

I hate kilobyte-based pricing. It confuses the user and often costs them more money. This is a pricing scheme that favors operators, not users, and detracts from the user experience.

People who market cellular data services have the thickest skulls in the world. It takes years for the drip, drip, drip of common sense to penetrate.

It makes much more sense to make each photo the same price, offer a certain number of photos for a fixed price per month or offer unlimited picture messaging for one fixed fee (which is more an American pricing preference than European, I think).

When one megapixel cameras are available in Europe and the U.S., it would make sense to offer different pricing because of the dramatically larger file size and increased time required to send a photo.

But even with one megapixel files, the pricing still should based upon the number of photos, not the size.

Alan

[Toti Stefansson]

I've been trying to explain this to our mobile operators, who have a size based pricing structure for picture messages. Using normal settings on my Nokia 3650 I get wildly different sizes of files, putting the same user action in two different price categories.

I can imagine the poor helpdesk person telling the subscriber "Oh, did you by any chance take a picture of TWO persons in Hawaii-shirts? That costs more."