Cellphone a good all-around tool for newspapers

Now that newspapers are discovering that they can transform their reporters into multimedia content generators (read: the reporters can take pictures, audio and video), one of the real innovative ways of empowering them is to issue them bitchin’ cellphones.

The latest one to come out is starting to look like it might really be suitable for taking decent pictures that can be run on the front page – the LG “Viewty” phone will be coming out in mid-October.

There are also a couple of LG phones coming out that look to be designed to fight the iPhone for the touch screen/all around coolness niche.

A 5.1 megapixel image can theoretically be blown up to 8×11 size … although the real test is going to be with color depth, focus, image clarity, etc. There is obviously no way that a cellcam can compete with a digital SLR for image quality, but for the quick’n’dirty world of online multimedia, if the content is compelling, the image quality can be forgiven.  

Here’s some more tech specs:

Granted, it may not be the best of names, but it has some cool
features. Chief of which is its 5.1 MP camera which has a Schneider
Kreuznach lens, image stabilizer, up to ISO 800 sensitivity, auto
focus, and 120fps video recording. It also has a 3 inch screen as well
as a music player.

If it does have single-click ability to upload video (as of this writing, to a YouTube account, although that can obviously change), this could also be a boon to lone wolf citizen reporters looking to build out their media content.

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