I owned an HTC phone a while back, one of the first PDA-like types. I can’t remember the model, and that’s probably a good thing. It was AWFUL. Windows Mobile had just escaped from Windows CE, and using the phone was a trial, at the best of times. The camera wasn’t much use either, around 2MP, I think, but the pics always looked nice, because by the standards of the day, it had a MASSIVE screen to view them on. It had another interesting feature, which got no play whatsoever, but always made me think of how people use camera-phones. Right next to the lens, there was a little chromed mirror, that allowed you to compose self portraits, from arms length. Now Samsung has taken that idea to the point and shoot camera design, with their DualView range:

The range includes the TL205, TL210, TL220 and TL225, all using a 12.4MP CCD sensor, with optical zoom ranging from 3x to 5x. The base model TL205 gets a Samsung f6.3, 18.9mm lens, but ALL other models get some real glass: An f3.5~5.9, Schneider-KREUZNACH piece, that is the 35mm film equivalent of 27-124mm! There is dual image stabilisation (optical and digital) and a 3-inch, 230K pixel rear LCD display. The front display is 1.5-inch, 61k-pixel. That’s as big as the rear LCD on some (still) very popular DSLR cameras…

Hopefully Samsung will decide to sell this range in SA, and we’ll get a demo to report back with!