Too much phone for the likes of me, but I'll find SOMEthing to do with it.

July 2006

Signing on with Verizon for another two-year term meant getting to select a new phone to replace the ancient Nokia hammer/phone. Both the Motorola RAZR and the LG VX9800 came with VERY attractive rebates so I tried them out. I might have selected a pink RAZR but I couldn't convince anyone to promise to address me hereafter as Mr. Pink. So I tried a gray one. I don't need a stylish camera phone, I thought to myself as I left the store, but within 15 minutes I was trying it out.

Not bad performance overall, but as the day wore on the RAZR felt more and more like a non-intuitive slab of bling. I don't do bling. So I returned it for this monster: the VX9800. Verizon customizes it to drive you to their portals, but it still has a lot of versatile doo-dads. One thing that caught my attention was the quasi-macro setting on the 1.3 M camera. It works pretty well, allowing a pretty sharp image from about 4-6 inches. Then I saw a "night" entry in the camera menu. You don't think ... I mean, could I use it for IR? Is that a Mojo Jr. in my pocket?

Here are a few test shots, with my VX9800 in night mode and an R72 IR pass filter held in front of the lens.

Big Spring Park, Huntsville, AL.

Not bad, but it really needs to held steady since the speed is very slow in this mode. I found a railing at the other end of the park, tried again and got these panos, three shots per mode:

Big Spring Park, Huntsville, AL. VX9800 camera phone. (mouse over for the IR pano)

It's official: I'm sick with the IR. By the way, if you have the JavaScript off in your browser, here is the color version and here is the IR version. It's still too much phone, but the price was right (~$50 aftrer rebate) and it does send and receive calls. The rest is gravy. Mmmm ... gravy.