Cognima says Nokia 7610 1.3 megapixel photos look terrible when sent via U.K. networks

London-based MMS software company Cognima says the photo quality of Nokia's 1.3 megapixel camera photo is awful when transmitted over all U.K. cellular networks. In a press release on August 16, Cognima says compression employed by the cellular networks results in photos that at best is "barely printable."

A copy of the entire four-page report is available in a pdf file.

The 7610 can produce photos with 1152 x 864 pixels. Cognima took photos using the 7610's "small" MMS setting for photos of 160 x 120 pixel and the "large" setting for 576 x 432 pixels. The results were the same for all the U.K. networks: Vodafone, O2, T-Mobile and Orange.

Using the "small" setting "The result is an extremely low quality photo that some online photo albums will refuse to print." Using the "large" setting, "The result is a low quality photo that is barely printable and shows visible artifacts from the severe image compression." (See below)

Cognima to the rescue

Not surprisingly, Cognima says it has software -- Cognima Snap -- that enables users to easily and relatively quickly send photos to an online photo album.

The compression employed by cellular operators is indeed a significant barrier to producing high-quality images. The situation is even worse because user-hostile cellular operators introduce camera phones that don't have infrared, Bluetooth or any PC transfer cable and software .

Comments

[barrie harrop]

Velocitimage® has just completed testing with one of the world’s largest wireless Telco’s, the co-branded solution allows the Telco’s to extend their valuable brands into the digital print space, their staff no longer have train their customers to go off to Kodak-Fujifilm-we have created a real driver with our exclusive MMS applications for footfall to their stores, and generating incremental sales with the new generation camera/phone handsets, as there is a perception in the world market with some 200 m customers that these handsets take poor quality imaging therefore the sales teams in the wireless Telco stores now need to prove to these prospective customers that the new generation camera/phone handsets are about serious imaging.
Barrie Harrop© bharrop@ozemail.com.au

[barrie harrop]

Most new "megapixel"camera/phone handsets coming into the market in Japan at the moment have removable media,like a mini SD card or memory stick.
This trend will sweep the world in the next 6-12mths.
So its will be very easy to deal with one's images.
Currently in Japan its 3m pixels,with 4m pixels expected by the end of the year with optical zoom lenses,by the end of next year its 6m pixels,this is serious imaging capabilty.
Consider it took some 50 years for the 35mm camera to meet this market penatration of 1bn camera's,its going to take "megapixel" maybe the next 3-4yrs,at 150m connections each year to do this,its not just the biggest thing happening in the wireless telco sector,its the biggest thing happening in all imaging.

[Simon East]

tychocat,

You would not see any image compression on a 30 to 50k image - many MMSCs can handle 50k images - however most cannot handle the 300k files megapixel cameras produce. Hence the phone has to reduce the quality to get the photo to below 100k size. So if you had a megapixel phone you would see the image compression taking place.

The reason we put the report out was that we were amazed that the mobile industry was about to start selling Megapixel mobile phones and yet there is no easy way to get megapixel images off these phones.

Regards,

Simon East,
CEO Cognima.

[tychocat]

Most of the problems the Cognima "report"-thinly-veiled-marketing-tool reveals are either trivial or overstated. My now-ancient-and-venerable SE T300 routinely sends its VGA-quality jpegs via T-Mobile, with individual file sizes ranging between 30k and 50k. As far as I can tell, there's no degradation of the image beyond the fact it's taken with a cheap-lensed handheld VGA camera without a flash by an utter amateur. Yes, I had to change the settings of the camera - once - to reset the resolution from "awful" to "adequate", but that was it, and there appears to be no further compression by my carrier. I do not see a need for the Cognima software, though admittedly I do not yet own a megapixel camera-phone.

I also gently chide Mr. Reiter for not taking a more critical editorial look at this alleged report in writing it up. While I don't expect an engineering analysis of every press release of every new phone, I might expect a little more critical examination when such bald rationalizations and exaggerations are handed out in the guise of news.