March 24, 2004
America's Funniest Phone Videos
Walter Mossberg for the WSJ tested a few video phones from Sprint and AT&T and mentions briefly that they are sure to raise privacy fears, as still picture have. To summarize his testing, basically he says the the video process walk-through steps are exhausting, transfer speeds are slow and the fact that the carriers are not interoperable means today, you can't really share your pictures with many people.
"Though these new phones are capable of capturing only about 15 seconds of choppy, grainy video, they are sure to raise privacy fears even higher than their still-picture predecessors.
Neither service is interoperable with different U.S. carriers for photo or video transferring, which limits usage of these expensive phones even further. If the recipient's phone doesn't have video playback functionality, which is most likely the case, she can still see the video clip on a computer by using the Internet.
All in all, these video cameras are pretty cool for the first few minutes that you see them in action. But the truth is that you'd have to really need or want to send lots of video clips to walk through the exhausting steps and slow transfer speeds that accompany this technology. And as of now, there aren't many other people who will be able to view your videos on their cellphones".
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