I’ve posted a few dozen photos and a few videos I’ve shot with Research in Motion’s new Pearl 8120 that has video recording capability (a first for the Pearl series), plus a two megapixel camera (an increase from 1.3 megapixels) and WiFi (also new).
The 8120 isn’t available in the United States, yet, but I assume it will be offered this year. The Pearl 8130, with GPS instead of WiFi, will be available this month from Verizon Wireless and Sprint.
The photos (I posted the first batch of photos a couple of weeks ago) aren’t bad at all for a two megapixel camera phone. The phone has a 3x and 5x digital zoom, but I never use a digital zoom (if you need to zoom, do it with an image editing program).
Mediocre or worse
The videos, however, are, at best, mediocre. I say “mediocre” when viewed on the 8120’s screen or in a small QuickTime window.
However, when viewed on the Web in a larger window, such as on YouTube (see below), the results are quite awful. (If you’re viewing this video on YouTube’s Web site you’re able to click a box immediately to the right of the little loudspeaker to reduce the size so it looks closer to the size you’d see on the 8120’s display.)
I uploaded three videos I took this weekend of the pretty fall scenery at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maryland to both YouTube and Vimeo. YouTube is notorious for compressing videos so they look pretty bad, so I also tried Vimeo. Unfortunately, the 8120’s videos look bad there, too.
One of the videos I shot was near the entrance to the mountain’s recreational area with a small pond with the leaves on the trees changing colors. The video is terrible but the photo of the scene where the video was shot looks fine, although I probably would lighten it and improve the contrast (see below).
I’m a fan of RIM’s products (that, as an analyst, I am able to test for extended periods) and welcome the company’s inclusion of video recording capabilities. I hope, though, that software updates will improve the quality of the videos because they sure could use it.
More about 8120, RIM wireless imaging
If you want to read more information about the 8120, the first part of a two-part article I wrote about the phone and RIM’s wireless imaging strategy was posted today on the mobile video/mobile TV site “Mobi-lize.”
By the way, I wrote in the Mobi-lize article that RIM will offer a software upgrade for Curve 83xx owners so that handset also be able to record video. The upgrade is scheduled for early next year.
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