In the past few months, a blitz of TV ads has shown happy people sending little pictures through the digital ether with a couple of presses of a cellphone button. The Sanyo SCP-8100 and Samsung a620 ($225 to $300), with service activation and subsidy from Sprint PCS, each sport a tiny lens, ready to snap and transmit.

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Once the novelty of taking party pictures and adding mug shots to your phone's address book wears off, you'll begin to appreciate the genuine usefulness of the picture phone, from sending your insurance agent evidence of an auto accident to getting your sister's opinion on your holiday party dress. The Samsung also lets you take a self-portrait, so you can share your mug with those you love.

We're not talking Ansel Adams. Test pictures tended to be grainy, blurry, or washed out. And the pictures don't even reside in the phone's memory; you have to sign on to your service provider's data network and use up airtime transmitting them to a Web site–one reason mobile service providers are delighted to sell this revenue-enhancing feature.

Sure, these cute phones carry gadget cachet. But $300 will also buy you a quality digital camera.
–Janet Rae-Dupree