The Siemens S65 is a field ahead of its other camera-equipped brothers and sisters at Siemens, incorporating a 1.3mpx digital still and video camera – much, much, much better than any VGA camera (can’t say much about the software side of things though...) ! With a maximum resolution of 1280 x 960 pixels the images can be used for much more than just MMS/e-mail messaging and wallpapers or screensavers, these are high-quality images! The handset also supports MPEG4 video recording, something very few camera phones do.

Let’s start with the little issue I had with the camera, and get that out of the way! Overall, the quality of the shots taken by the S65’s 1.3mpx camera is very impressive… when they’re taken outside. Inside lighting situations or just situations with little natural light cause the photo to come out very grainy and just generally awful looking. You can see in the example shots below an inside photo and then outside photo, there’s a very big difference. Therefore my suggestion is to try and take photos with lots of natural light in the setting if you’re inside, or try and stick to outside photos!

Now into the good stuff. The camera application of the S65 doesn’t need a degree is astrophysics to be able to operate properly, it’s very simple. This may be a problem for those who are after more advanced features though, as the application is like that found in VGA-models but with new hardware. The 65,536 colour TFT LCD is alright for imaging with a mega pixel camera, but a 262,144 colour LCD would have been more suitable.

At the top of the screen you will find two small icons – a sun and a magnifying glass. Next to them are directional points, and moving the directional stick in the direction indicated will either increase/decrease the brightness, or zoom in/out. Simple, huh! A small text label in the top right hand corner of the viewfinder section of the application shows approximately how many images can be captured in the current photo setting, great for monitoring memory usage. Below the viewfinder is the current photo resolution setting.

When in the video mode, which can be changed using the left soft key, the same icons are there with the exception of the little text box, but you can figure out how much space you have for video by reading the text below the viewfinder, which usually says “0:00/0:30min.” as that’s the maximum amount of video that can be recorded in one hit. Even with a lower resolution you can only record 30 seconds of video with or without audio. Video on the S65 is MPEG4 format, with up to 15 frames per second.

Settings which can be modified for image capture are: resolution, and colour mode. Resolutions available are Premium (1280 x 960 pixels), High (640 x 480 pixels), Medium (320 x 240 pixels), Low (160 x 120 pixels), and Wallpaper (180 x 240 pixels). Colour modes are greyscale or sepia, which can be good if you’re into photo manipulation. You can also change the memory which is used for saving photos, internal or MMC card. The default picture name can also be changed (or added to, the date and time stay). In video you can also change the resolution and colour mode, but only two resolutions are available – Premium and Medium. Premium video resolution is 176 x 144 pixels, and Medium is 128 x 96 pixels. A zoom is also offered, up to 5x.

The pictures I took with the S65 were a reasonably good quality, mobile phones haven’t quite reached perfection when it comes to digital imaging… yet. As said inside images don’t look that too crash hot, and taking close-up images usually results in a blurry image when viewed on a larger screen, which was another disappointment.

If you take a look at the images I took outside you should be pretty impressed (I know my mate Julius was, with his newspaper pirate hat!). Personally I liked the 640 x 480 pixel resolution shots the most, they seemed to have a high amount of quality and aren’t really tiny either.

More images can be found in our mega pixel camera comparison article, which can be viewed here (link). The article contains shots from the current mega pixel camera phones on the market with comparisons between different makes and models.

Day shots (outside mode):

Siemens S65	Siemens S65
Low resolution	Medium resolution
Enlarge (120x160 pixels)	Enlarge (240x320 pixels)

Day shots (outside mode):

Siemens S65	Siemens S65
High resolution	Premium resolution
Enlarge (480x640 pixels)	Enlarge (960x1280 pixels)

Effect shots:

Siemens S65	Siemens S65
inside mode	Sepia
Enlarge (960x1280 pixels)	Enlarge (960x1280 pixels)

Day shots:

Siemens S65	Siemens S65
zoom 3x	zoom 5x
Enlarge (766x574 pixels)	Enlarge (256x192 pixels)

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Millions with the Siemens S65

Table of contents:

Overview (Page 1)
Camera performance (Page 2 - additional page)
Major features (Page 3)
Problems/Issues (Page 4)
In Summary/Checklist (Page 5)