Settling for a 2MP Keitai
Among technology enthusiasts in the Tokyo area, I have long been something of an apostate for my relative ambivalence about mobile phone technology. For the first three years I lived in Japan, I was pretty sure I didn’t even need a keitai (the Japanese word for “cell phone,” which I really wish would get assimilated into English—borrowed words like sushi and samurai are so passé). When we moved to Kanagawa a few years ago, my wife finally persuaded me to get one, but I hardly ever used it (except for the mail feature, which I used regularly to keep in touch with her).
More recently, new keitai models have come with on-board cameras, which you might think would be attractive to me, seeing as I work with cameras every day. The problem I had with these, though, was that the resolution was often so low as to be almost useless—even for just using on Web pages. Ever more recently, though, new phones have been released with 2.0 and even 3.2 megapixel cameras, which is just about the level where you can get acceptable prints (if you print small). So when Casio introduced its new A5407CA model, it caught my attention. The fact that my previous keitai is now slowly reaching the end of its useful life (engineered obsolescence sets in after about three years for most models, I believe) made it even more appealing. So, as of yesterday, I am the proud owner of a new 2MP keitai. I would have been even prouder of the 3.2MP model, the A5406CA, but those extra MPs come at quite a premium, so I decided that I could settle for “just two,” which is kind of funny considering how impressive that is in a phone.
Perhaps this new toy will give me a reason to set up the moblogging features in ExpressionEngine. At any rate, it should allow me to capture those scenes that I miss when I don’t take a camera with me, which is often.
