No question, so far Windows Mobile smartphone cameras were pretty basic and users mostly got 1.3 megapixel cameras only or - if lucky - a 2 megapixel camera with fixfocus. However, with the recent launched and upcoming new Windows Mobile smartphones, the situation will get better The new HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Touch Pro and Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 features 3.2 megapixel cameras with autofocus and the Samsung SGH-i900 Omnia even features a 5 megapixel camera which makes it the first available Windows Mobile smartphone in the 5 megapixel class. Furthermore, three of the new smartphones (Touch Pro, Omnia and X1) even sports a photo LED for night shots. Nevertheless, since all cameras are not the same, we took the recent opportunity to compare the four most anticipated phone cameras which each other.

In addition to the previous Photoview, I also had the chance to play some extra minutes with O2 Germany's Xda diamond pro, aka the HTC Touch Pro, to record a first hands-on Videoview of O2's (and HTC's) latest Windows Mobile smartphone. As you can see in the video, the footprint of the device is really small - quite similar to the HTC Touch Diamond. However, the Pro is nearly double as thick as the Touch Diamond. But the full-size QWERTZ(Y) keyboard is quite good, even if you think that the device is so small. On the backside you have the same 3.2 Megapixel autofocus camera as used for the Touch Diamond but this time it gets a LED photo-light supported:

As confirmed earlier, O2 Germany will also release the recently announced HTC Touch Pro and now we also know how O2 is going to call its Raphael version: O2 Xda diamond pro.
While O2 Germany's latest Windows Mobile smartphone has yet to be officially announced (but I  heard that a pre-announcement is coming today with the full-blown press release on Monday), I already had my 15 minutes quality-time with an early marketing sample which - nevertheless - isn't sporting O2's branding but still carries HTC's. However, the keyboard layout (yes, it's QWERTZ which means it's a German keyboard) and the keyboard color (blue instead of HTC's green design) are already the final one:

Following the previous Samsung SGH-i900 Omnia Hardware hands-on, this (24 minutes) Videoview of the SGH-i900 Omnia features Samsung's software and Graphical User Interface (GUI) implementation on Samsung's upcoming Windows Mobile Professional smartphone. While running Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, Samsung did a pretty good job to make the not yet thumb-friendly Windows Mobile touchscreen interface thumb-friendly by adding two kind of Today screen implementations (one pretty standard and one unique Widget-based Today screen) as well as an application launcher which completely replaces Windows Mobile's Start menu.

Not yet released but following our earlier Samsung SGH-i900 Omnia Photoview, I finally had the chance to spend some more time with Samsung's next Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional smartphone, Samsung recently announced and which is to be released soon. In this Videoview I will focus on the hardware and the i900 Omnia definitely offers some highlights including a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with face recognition and photo light as well as an optical joystick as introduced before by the Samsung SGH-i780 and it comes with either 8 or 16 GB of inbuilt memory (which is even expansible with microSD memory cards).