Snap! Cameraphones keep getting better

This is a seminal time for cameraphones. Within the next few months, according to industry calculations, the number of cameraphones is expected to exceed the total number of conventional cameras ever sold. Not bad for a device less than 10 years old, as cameras have been around for a century. It is a seminal moment for me in another way. My current digital camera, given as a present barely three years ago, is a 7.1 megapixel Nikon Coolpix 7900. It has served me well, but I have been trying three new cameraphones that are, in theory, more powerful. They are the first cameraphones to boast 8MP - that's 8 million pixels.

Megapixels don't define a good camera. That depends, among other things, on the quality and size of the lens and how much light is let in. But for the first time it is possible for most people to use a cameraphone rather than a digital camera without a noticeable diminution in quality. Talking to experts at the recent Symbian smartphone show in London, I found the consensus view was cameraphones will never (never say never ...) reach the quality of a single lens reflex, but by next year when 12MP models arrive - capable of taking images that can be blown up to poster-size proportions and with the nirvana of zero shutter lag - most users won't need to know the difference. Some will have a "burst" mode enabling you to "rewind" after taking a snap to get a better version.

We are nearly there already. All three of these phones have awesome specifications despite coming on the heels of the beautiful iPhone and the full-of-potential Google Android. Their main drawback - apart from poor battery life if used intensively, and screens that are difficult to read in bright sunlight - is that the complexity of their functions sometimes thwarts usability. Samsung has lobbed two 8MP models into the marketplace. One, the i8510, is a smartphone with the all-conquering (so far) Symbian operating system that was recently made open source, thereby giving users access to all the applications that outside developers will devise. It marks another coming of age, because cameraphones are no longer derivative but innovative. The i8510 has satellite navigation, a "touch" mouse and a super-sweet facility to take a 360-degree panoramic shot in almost failsafe fashion, plus the ability to wait until a person smiles and take the snap then.

Samsung's other 8MP offering is the touchscreen M8800, shipping next week. It isn't a smartphone and doesn't seem to have Wi-Fi enabled, so there will be data charges when uploading images etc. But it has the cool photo features of the (heavier) i8510, including the ability to tag snaps with the longitude and latitude of where they were taken and to sketch over them - though navigating through the photo library is a pain. The video function is almost as good as the Nokia N96, which is some praise. The third 8MP model, a Sony Ericsson Cybershot C905, is a neat phone weighing 136g with a slideback keyboard with big keys and a neat sliding lens cover, but hampered by apparent lack of Wi-Fi (though it is mentioned in the manual) and a disappointing battery life. Like the others it has a big screen and would have been regarded as a miracle of compacted technology five years ago, but now there are many similar devices.

The lesson is this: you no longer need to buy a separate camera for most uses, a fact that will be even more true next year. Cameraphones are expensive at plus or minus £500 if bought outright or "free" on a monthly contract. And they are strange, in that a mundane one can often produce great snaps in the right conditions while a state-of-the-art one sometimes does not. I have posted photos taken with these three cameraphones and others plus two digital cameras (7.1MP and 10MP) at bit.ly/keegan2. I wouldn't bet on being able to tell them apart in a blind tasting.

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