Love your cameraphone, hate the photo-transfer costs

USA Today has a story about the cost of camphones: they may be the latest fun technology, but it is still expensive to use them. To keep or share pictures taken on camera phones can add $15 to $20 per month, if not more, to the phone bill.

Now tech companies and photo industry leaders are beginning to introduce alternatives for moving pictures for free:

•Prints. To make the process between the snap and the retailer more seamless, Sprint's Web site directs to a Fuji site that lets you order prints for pickup at a local retailer. The Kodak Mobile site lets Cingular, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile subscribers send pictures from their phones for sharing and prints via mail order. But users still have to pay to send the pictures to the Internet from their phones.

Kodak Picture Maker self-service kiosks allow camera phone users to beam images directly into the machine, via Bluetooth or infrared technology. But few camera phones currently have Bluetooth.

•USB. Digital camera shutterbugs connect to the PC with a USB cable, but if by chance phone manufacturers make them available as an accessory, but some won't work in the USA.

•Removable media. A transfer possibility is buying a phone with a removable memory card slot, so that you store the pictures to memory and transfer them to your PC or bring the card to a retailer for prints.
But very few camera phones have memory card slots. And they're not cheap either, ranging from $419.99 to $469.99 with new service.

Regine | 6:43 PM | |
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