Introduction

As far as photos taken by camera phones go, the outcome is generally fuzzy, grainy and accompanied by noise. From the early days of camera phones capable of only QVGA resolution to the current norm of 1.3 megapixels, quality of the captured shots has always left consumers wanting more. As camera phones evolve along its role as a mobile phone and a digital camera hybrid, the common public no longer accepts substandard image quality. Granted the basic set of telephony functions for mobile phones (camera phones in this case) has matured and development in this department is gradually slowing down, it's not too hard to picture why manufacturers are increasingly focusing more on pixel count and the integration of camera related functions for every new model released.


Mitsubishi's latest offering the M900, is one such camera phone designed with a heavier emphasis on digital photography. Armed with a CCD image sensor rated at 2.0 megapixels, a camera light and even a set of dedicated camera buttons, the M900 does have a highly credible digital camera façade and should at the very least, produce cleaner and sharper pictures than older camera phones. Taking these into account, the digital imaging capability of the M900 will be one area we'll touch on a fair bit in this review.

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It's Quite a Handful

Due to an extra row of buttons for controlling the camera functions, the profile of the M900 is a shave thicker than most regular clamshell phones. It's also elongated along its vertical axis as the CCD image sensor is squeezed into the back of the phone and not in a dugout commonly found in the flip piece of clamshell camera phones. Positioning the lens in this manner allows the M900 to be handled in a similar fashion as one would with a digital camera.

The M900 is manufactured entirely out of plastic and a bright silver coating has been sprayed on to give it a contemporary look. A pair of chrome strips accompanies the external LCD and this prevents the phone from casting a completely plastic appearance. With buttons and I/O jacks laid out on both flanks of the phone, the M900 appears cluttered and this look might not appeal to everyone.

SIM card and battery are inserted here

The crown of the M900

Left flank

Right flank

View of the M900’s base

 

Hands-on With The M900 (Part 1)

With the exception of resolution, both the internal and external visual LCDs are able to display an impressive color depth of more than 262,000 colors apiece. Test wallpapers were displayed with good color saturation and minimal color banding was observed on our part. Serving as a viewfinder in camera mode is probably the best justification for incorporating dual 18-bit LCDs into the M900. The wide range of colors mean users are able to better visualize a frame before an actual shot takes place.

Settings available for the displays include personalization of wallpapers and adjustments of brightness and contrast levels. While the contrast level of the two screens is independent of one another, brightness control is not. The brightness levels of the screens are regulated by one global control and set at level three (out of five), both screens were sufficiently bright enough for good legibility, regardless of usage in an indoor or outdoor environment.

The M900 in standby mode

Power jack, Infrared port and the proprietary data jack (covered by a rubber plug)

Handling the data traffic in and out of the M900 are a proprietary data jack and an Infrared transceiver. Through the use of the latter wireless transmission medium, unprotected music and image files can be sent over to other devices with Infrared receivers. Notably lacking in the phone is Bluetooth support and without this, wireless accessories such as headsets and car kits are all beyond the boundary of the M900. The phone itself has 15MB of flash memory for storage purposes and this is dynamically allocated to the various phone functions when required.

 

Hands-on With The M900 (Part 2)

A move to the inside and we are presented with a user interface very similar to the one found in Mitsubishi's older clamshell model, the M720. Nine icons represent the sub-sections of the M900 and these are laid out in a grid system that corresponds to the layout of its keypad for quick access to the functions of the phone. Thanks to the high resolution of the screen, the interface is now sharper and more vibrant than what was experienced on the older M720.

Icons of the menu are sorted in a grid format.

Though the look of the interface hasn't changed much over the months, one area that has received a dose of improvement is the response time. The M900 does not have the annoying lag that was so apparent in the M720 and as far as we are concerned, response time constitutes to a big chunk of the user friendliness of a mobilephone. The same responsiveness however, cannot be said for the message engine and despite the improvement made to the response time of the user interface; the M900 is still unable to register inputs fast enough for immediate reflection on the main screen.

The message engine interface is spacious and intuitive

All received messages are preloaded into memory upon entering the Inbox for quick previews

Loading time of Inbox was pretty fast, considering it had to extract and display up to three lines of text in a preview pane for the highlighted message. While this preview feature is certainly useful, it is unfortunately, responsible for slight pauses experienced when we reverted back to the Inbox after browsing through the content of a message.

Keypad of the M900 has a good feel to it with keys well spaced out.

Illuminated by a soothing blue backlight, the old school keypad has its well-sized keys spaced out evenly across its width. North of the keypad is a 5-way navikey and apart from its main navigational role, this set of keys is also part of the M900's shortcut key contingent. Out of the five keys, two are customizable while the remaining three are preset to what Mitsubishi considers as heavily used functions/applications.

 

Hands-on With The M900 (Part 3)

Fully charged, we were able to squeeze nearly three days of battery life out of the M900. Throughout this period of time, the reception of the phone was great. We did not experience any sudden disengagement of calls and volume of the earpiece was comfortably loud too. Through a dedicated 'Address Book' button and a phonebook that supports search via key combination, contacts can be swiftly searched out for calls and messaging.

The three horizontal lines are openings to the onboard polyphony ringer

Audio alert of the M900 lies in the hand of a 64-chord polyphony ringer and this can be found hidden from sight at the back of the phone. The ringer was fairly loud and the number of missed calls we had throughout the test period was kept low. Strength of the vibrator was just as powerful, making the M900 a great phone to own if incoming calls and messages are critical to your line of work. In addition to its mix of preinstalled polyphonic ringtones, the M900 together with its onboard miniSD memory expansion slot allows MP3 audio files to be assigned as ringtones on top of its playback functionality.

The miniSD memory expansion slot gives the M900 greater storage capacity for MP3 tunes and digital images.

Five alert modes are selectable

Included in the M900 is a group of simple applications tasked to assist you in managing your daily schedules while you're on the move. Like all good phones, a complete selection of alert modes is at your disposal for instant adaptation of alerts to conform to the different environments you're in.

 

The Camera Mode Tested

Hoping to impress the crowd with superior image quality, Mitsubishi has opted to go down the path of a CCD (Charge Coupling Device) sensor instead of the commonly used CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) image sensor. Camera phones with lower end CMOS image sensors have been around for ages and by and large, pictures taken by this sensor are known to be grainy, noisy and lack sharpness. Since VGA and 1.3-Megapixel resolutions are considered low, power consuming post-processing circuitry that is usually needed for better picture quality can be omitted to cut costs and to save space for easier implementations. Combine this with the low power consuming nature of CMOS sensors and it's not hard to see why camera phones (of up to 1.3 megapixels) are mostly based on this image sensor.

With the mobilephone industry pushing towards higher pixel count for camera phones, quality of pictures is no longer perceived a trivial matter. Along with increasing resolution, a great deal of attention is now channeled towards camera performance and image quality. That being said, low-end and more specifically low-resolution CMOS sensors can no longer fit the bill. Granted 2 to 3.1 megapixels CCD sensors are now much more affordable, highly refined, offer better image quality and are now easier to implement, incorporating this type of image sensor into camera phones such as the M900 is a very sensible move. Over time, we should see more and more camera phones being released with CCD sensors.

Together with the main LCD, taking self-portraits is easy.

Simply slide open the lens cover to start snapping away as you would with a point and shoot digital camera.

A set of camera buttons is found on the side of the M900 and this allows photo-taking functionality just like standard digital cameras.

With its lens manufactured by Fujinon, a reputable brand name widely regarded as one of the leading manufacturers of lenses and optics, pictures snapped by the M900 came out sharp and well saturated. Though a fair bit of noise is still visible, the superior dynamic range of CCD image sensors has this better tamed than its CMOS counterparts (save for the high end CMOS sensors). As a result of this, we can see that the images captured the by M900's CCD sensor are perceptively cleaner and are more true-to-life. Where printout is concerned, 3R printouts came out sharp while 4R printouts were just a tad grainy, but still decent enough for image appreciation.

At a flick of a switch, the M900 can be set to snap in either a landscape or macro mode.

Boasting a CCD image sensor and a camera face that comes complete with a set of camera controls, the M900 is really shaping itself as a competent budget digital camera. Adding to its imaging capabilities is macro mode, a feature that is standard on digital cameras but is not common in camera phones untill now. As its name implies, this mode allows the M900 to snap close-up shots of subjects without losing focus. In the test shots taken above of a figurine, the picture on the left taken with macro mode is able to display details with clarity as opposed to the fuzzy picture on the right that was taken in landscape mode.

 

Conclusion

Digital photography on mobile phones has certainly come a long way in both resolution and implementation. Through maturity and advances in CCD image sensors, hybrids such as the M900 are finally correct representations of the term 'camera phone'. Earlier generations of the so-called camera phones were nothing more than a regular mobile phone slapped on with an image sensor. Though it is said that Multimedia Messaging (MMS) is the primary reason behind the birth of this breed of mobile phones, much of the advances seen so far has in fact little to do with this mode of messaging. For one, the maximum size for an MMS is 300KB (subjected to the service provider and mobile phone in use) while most pictures taken at two megapixels can easily go beyond this storage capacity. Furthermore, the screen size of most mobile phones are no bigger than QVGA (320 x 240), thus when it comes to viewing pictures off a mobile phone's screen, a camera with VGA resolution has more than enough pixels to get the job done. It is only when these pictures or photos require printing when the number of pixels really takes precedence. Since color printers are becoming ever more affordable, printing out candid snapshots at 3R or even 4R has never been easier and practical than now.


The impressive image quality of the captured shots with the M900 is not the only property worth mentioning. The LCD screen resolution has been bumped up a notch and coupled with improved response time for the phone's user interface, the M900 is a joy to use. The loud and audible polyphony ringer as well as the intensity of its silent alert are plus points that consumers will appreciate in practical use (especially in noisy environments). To top it off, the M900 has a decent battery mileage to give you more than two days worth of normal usage. Take note however that extensive use of the camera will drain the battery a lot sooner. For a camera phone that seems to have a good balance of features and functions, the lack of Bluetooth and its slightly sluggish message engine are unfortunate disappointments that we had to point out. With these niggling issues in mind and at a suggested retail price of S$498, the M900 was just shy of bagging a 4.5 stars award from us.