T-Mobile USA to offer 8-megapixel cameraphone

Betting that a touchscreen interface and high-resolution camera phone will lead to more photo-sharing – and accompanying data revenue – T-Mobile USA Inc. said today it would soon launch Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s Memoir.
The carrier has not provided pricing or a launch date for the 8-megapixel handset, which is an exclusive to T-Mobile USA. It has also not provided the onboard memory capacity. The phone will come with a 1 gigabyte card and can handle a 16 GB card.
The 8-megapixel resolution is the highest in the United States market; 5-megapixel units are also available from Samsung and Motorola Inc.
“T-Mobile is clearly trying to use imaging to differentiate itself,” said Avi Greengart, analyst at Current Analysis.
But the analyst cautioned that resolution doesn’t automatically correlate with image quality, for a variety of reasons, though high resolution allows digital zooming, which saves device real estate over optical zooms, and large blowups or cropping. Greengart said he had not yet tested the image quality on the Memoir.
“A key drawback to this device is that it is not a smartphone, and cannot be augmented with additional applications like an iPhone or Android phone,” Greengart said.
Samsung has designed the unit to mimic a standalone digital camera and given it what may be the highest resolution of any camera phone in the United States. The touchscreen offers a virtual QWERTY keypad, with a range of messaging capabilities, multimedia and A-GPS navigation.
Pricing of the handset and accompanying data offerings will be crucial, as T-Mobile USA’s subscribers are typically thrifty and the device is designed for data-centric photo-sharing, browsing and messaging.
“If (the Memoir) is priced above comparable smartphones – and, given its imaging capabilities, it almost certainly will be – it will sell in relatively low volumes for Samsung, but will be a nice brand driver (i.e., halo product) for both Samsung and T-Mobile,” Greengart said.
Also, the Memoir is equipped with access to the carrier’s growing 3G network, which could limit the appeal of high-end, data-centric devices. But the success of Apple Inc.’s iPhone among consumers with modest means has raised the question of whether converged devices will in fact replace single-purpose devices such as digital cameras and MP3 players.
Clearly, T-Mobile USA and Samsung are gambling that that will be the case.
“This is the camera phone that will make people want to leave their digital camera at home,” said Bill Ogle, chief marketing officer for Samsung Mobile.
Article updated Feb. 5 to include additional analysis.