Click to View

You've blown the budget for mobile devices buying your spiffy new PDA. Still and all, you kind of regret not getting one of those cool mobile phones with the built in digital cameras.

A camera could come in handy for e-mailing colleagues pictures of malfunctioning equipment or taking product shots on a trade show floor. Or you could use it to grab impromptu snapshots at a party or dance club.

No problem, you can have your PDA and shoot pictures with it too. You can even shoot video with it.

If the PDA has a slot for an SD (Secure Digital) memory card, and the slot supports the SDIO standard, which adds input/output capabilities, you can buy a tiny, tiny camera that plugs into the card slot.

Several companies offer SD camera cards, including two we tested recently—the $140 SDIO SmartCam Card from Pretec (see top image), which works in both Palm and Pocket PC devices, and the $130 Hewlett-Packard Photosmart Mobile Camera, which works on Pocket PCs only.


HP Photosmart Mobile Camera

In both cases, you install virtual camera software on the PDA using your sync program and then slide the camera card into the SD slot. To take pictures, compose the picture using the image displayed on the PDA screen in the virtual camera software and tap the virtual shutter button.

The picture is stored in PDA memory (or on a card) and you can view it using the camera software's viewer utility, transfer it to a PC using synch software or e-mail it.

Both PDA cameras we looked at use 1.3-megapixel photo sensors with fixed focus lenses that swivel and let you switch between normal and close-up mode. Each model also includes a 4x digital zoom feature. That's where, for the most part, the similarities end.

The HP camera is solidly and thoughtfully constructed and takes remarkably good pictures within the limitations of a 1.3-megapixel, fixed focus camera. It comes with useful software for reviewing pictures and making slide shows. It even includes a very well designed belt pack for protecting the camera when not in use.

None of the above, unfortunately, can be said for the Pretec product, which unaccountably sells for more. It appears flimsy, takes pictures that are more often badly exposed and soft of focus. The pictures are also more apt to be marred by electronic noise and digital artifacts.

HP Photosmart Mobile Camera

Pretec SmartCam

Click each picture to see full-sized image

We tested both with an HP iPAQ h1900 series Pocket PC. There is no reason why using another HP product to test the cameras would bias the evaluation in favor of the HP unit. The problems with the Pretec unit have more to do with shoddy design and poor quality components.

Even the user manual—a Word file on the software disc—is inferior. The badly translated English makes the document almost incomprehensible. The HP manual comes as a PDF file and is written in clear English.

When we plugged the Pretec camera in to the SD slot, the first thing we noticed is that it sits up too high, with about a quarter-inch gap between the camera body and the top of the PDA. The HP unit sits much lower, though there is also a small gap. Given that the plastic of the SD card is only a few millimeters thick, there is a real risk of the Pretec unit catching on something and breaking off.

Installing the Pretec Smart Camera software was problem free. When we put the camera card in the slot, however, the PDA did not always or immediately recognize it. On most occasions, we had to unmount the camera and remount it—sometimes more than once—before the PDA would recognize it. And then you usually had to manually launch the Smart Camera software and click the camera mode button before the view through the lens appeared on the screen.

The software is evidently supposed to launch automatically in camera mode when the card is mounted. It did this occasionally, although only after a several second delay. With the HP unit, the software launched automatically and instantly every time.

No digital still camera LCD viewfinder displays 30 frames per second for a full-motion video effect, but the Pretec unit appears to display not much more than one frame per second. The delay in seeing the effects of moving the camera is so pronounced that it makes it very difficult to compose.

To make matters worse, the camera does not take the picture exactly when you tap the shutter button and hear the shutter sound, not even close to it. With the first few pictures we took, we had already moved the PDA by the time the lens actually opened, and I ended up taking a picture of something else entirely.

Neither of these problems occurred with the HP unit.

The Pretec software works reasonably well, although the interface is slightly clunky with menus with white text in a tiny black box. You can adjust Brightness, white balance (daylight, tungsten, etc.) and resolution (1280x960 down to 160x120).

If you have resolution set at something less than the maximum, you can also shoot in continuous mode for three or six shots taken each time you click the shutter. Given the delay between tapping the shutter button and a picture being taken, it is perhaps not surprising that this doesn't work very well.

One software feature never worked. Tapping the icon for the digital zoom did not bring up the zoom menu that lets you choose the magnification level.