Nice Paper Specs...

Author's Rating:

Pros: Compact size, native 2.0 mega pixel resolution, flash, cheap, comes with tripod

Cons: LCD only, short battery life, turns off often (flaw?), interpolated 3.1 mega pixel rating

The Bottom Line: 
If I had a flawed unit, then I will only recommend it to users who only uses it outdoors and carries a lot of spare AA batteries.

Author's Review
One look at it's size and specs...and then price...will make you skeptical at what it can do. I am talking about, of course, the bold 3.1 mega pixel rating, the small-cell-phone size, and the unbelievable $120 price tag.

Once you get over this and start to use it, you get it.

I purchased this camera in hopes to capture more memories in better quality than what my Treo 600's built-in 640x480 camera can. I also wanted something with a flash for indoor and night shots when I met this lovely young lady. We had much fun taking irrelevant pictures, and she had much fun receiving 2x3" printouts of my Treo's 640x480 creations, I thought it'd be nice to have a smaller and better camera for impromptu shots.

Out of the Box
The box comes with the camera itself, a strap, 2 AA batteries to power the critter, and a driver CD for all recent Windows and Mac versions. The thin manual wasn't a surprise, but the included mini tripod was!

The camera is as small as it seems in the box once it is out, and has a cheap plastic feel. The shutter button only clicks once- weird for users who's used to the "press half way for focus" method.

There is a lens cover that slides out of the way, and is suppose to turn the camera on and off. A separate on/off button is on the top of the unit as well.

An 1.5" LCD screen pretty much takes up the entire left side of the rear, while several buttons for navigating for settings adorn the right.

Having a built-in flash at this price point is also amazing. But it turns out that it was underpowered for any subjects further than 4 feet away.

Ease of Use
Slide open the battery cover on the side and slip in 2 AA batteries, and you're pretty much set to go. Slide open the lens cover, and the unit will turn.

You can now point and shoot to your heart's content. Unfortunately, there is no viewfinder, so you must rely solely on the LCD, which shortens battery life.

The 4x digital zoom is smooth and not discrete, though because it uses digital means of zooming, I would not recommend using this feature at all (though liberal use with it's native and high resolution would be fine).

Settings are also easy to access and change. You hit the menu button, which will allow you to (via LCD screen) change resolutions (from 640x480 to 1600x1200), time/date, flash, timer, etc. You can even set it to 60 or 50 Hz depending on where you live and what electrical frequency standard you have in your area (Europe, USA, etc.) which is suppose to help it take better indoor pictures and video.

Speaking of which, you can slide the switch over to video cam mode to take 320x240 30 fps videos, as well. The integrated 16 MB of memory isn't much for this camera, but you can use standard SD Cards for higher capacities.

The digital zoom will not woth with videos.

Flash Memories
Besides the memories you should be capturing with this camera, let's talk about the solid state flash memory performance with this little guy.

First, let us take a look at the performance we get from the internal 16 MB, which the camera gets powered by the USB, and acts like a disk drive once connected to a PC. The USB 1.1 interface doesn't help out with speedy SD Cards, but as we can see here, the internal memory is a bottleneck (using HD Tach 2.61):

Max Read - 188.0 kb/s
Min Read - 73.0 kb/s
Avg Read - 87.4 kb/s

Max Write - 236.0 kb/s
Min Write - 161.0 kb/s
Avg Write - 200.3 kb/s

Random Access Time - 12.8 ms
Read Burst Speed - 0.3 MB/s

CPU Utilization - 4.4%

For the first time, a solid state flash memory device actually writes faster than it's read speed! That is definately strange.

So what if we took the fastest card (that I have in my stash), the ATP 1 GB 60x SD Card?

Max Read - 322.0 kb/s
Min Read - 313.0 kb/s
Avg Read - 317.5 kb/s

Max Write - 321.0 kb/s
Min Write - 303.0 kb/s
Avg Write - 312.0 kb/s

Random Access Time - 8.1 ms
Read Burst Speed - 0.3 MB/s

CPU Utilization - 4.5%

As you can see, the USB 1.1 bandwidth seem like it is saturated at around 300 kb/sec. This doesn't seem right considering that USB 1.1 was rated at 11 mbps, which is around 1 MB/sec. However, USB 1.1 does have several mode, and the lower speed mode is rated at 300 kb/sec (around what a 2x CD-ROM drive can muster). Why did they choose to give the PocketCam X a slower mode USB 1.1 is beyond me.

Realities
The claimed 3.1 mega pixels is actually interpolated from a native 2.0 mega pixel CMOS image sensor. You're better off setting it to 2.0 mega pixels from the start.

Photo quality is just okay. Printing 4x6" photos from my Canon i900D reveal graininess in indoor pictures, although outdoor pictures with plenty of sunlight looks sharp, and much more on par with mid-priced cameras.

Videos are almost always grainy, but unwatchable indoors with low lighting (such as a room lit with only one 60W incandescent bulb).

I would still recommend this camera for those who value the ability to have a camera on hand almost all the time. This is because of it's size and the fact that it's so cheap, you won't care if you lost it or broke it. However, this camera is completely unusable!

WHAT!!??
The PocketCam turns itself off every so often (like after a picture or two), and sometimes won't turn back on. It is difficult to get it back up and running. This happens even with a fresh pair of batteries.

Speaking of which, the batteries only last for 30 shots (in between having to forcing the darn thing to stay on), with mixed use of flash.

Safe for Human Consumption?
In all, the 2 major faults out weighs all the pros the PocketCam can muster, leaving me to not recommend this for anyone but your enemy (but then why spend $120 on a gag gift?)

If it functioned correctly even with the battery issues, I'd still recommend it for those who take outdoor pictures mostly, and value the compactness of a camera over optical quality. Even at 2.0 mega pixels, that is enough for 4x6" prints.

Alas, the reason why I bought this camera (and photo printer) left me, which also another good reason for me to return the camera, as the photos, as well as the memories, were painfully deleted.

She never even knew I was looking for a better camera...both were short lived.