It’s always hard to find a good camera phone with equally adept music capabilities. You may find a phone with an 8 or 12 megapixel camera but it may lack the basic necessities of a music phone. For example, it may only support a couple of music formats and also it may not support files with a high bitrate or may even support less memory expansion. Additionally, the quality of music playback may not be that great. Conversely, a great music phone may have a very mediocre camera component. Picking one that offers the best of both worlds is a dicey affair indeed.

So here is a collection of what we think are some of the best camera phones out there that also have great audio capabilities.

Nokia 5233

Specifications:

• Display: 360 x 640 pixels, 3.2 inches, TFT resistive touchscreen, 16M colors
• Storage: 70 MB inbuilt, microSD, up to 16GB
• Camera: 2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels, video  640x360@30 fps
• Music formats supported: MP3/WAV/eAAC+/WMA player
• Battery: Li-Ion 1320 mAh
• Price: Rs. 7500

For this price, Nokia has dropped a bombshell on the touch-phone market. This is a very good quality touch phone that can support up to 16 GB of data. What the biggest misconception is that higher megapixels mean higher picture quality. But the nokia 5233’s two-megapixel camera is capable of capturing really nice quality pictures. So it’s a good consideration for someone who is looking for a cheap camera phone with a lot of music storage capacity.  

Samsung I5801 Galaxy Apollo
 

Specifications:

• Display: 240 x 400 pixels, 3.2 inches, TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
• Storage: 512MB ROM, microSD, up to 32GB, 1GB card included
• Camera: 3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels, autofocus, Geo-tagging, face and smile detection, video 320x240 at 15fps
• Music formats supported: MP3/WAV/eAAC+ player
• Battery: Li-Ion 1500 mAh
• Price: Rs. 12,300

This is the smaller version of Samsung’s highly successful and powerful Galaxy S. But it’s not all that low on performance itself. It has a 667 MHz processor and also sports the new and happening Android OS. It also supports most of the common audio formats and can take up to 32GB of micro SD memory. A 3.15-megapixel camera that has face and smile detection built does duty as a clicker. The camera is pretty good from all accounts, and all this in a package that should be good for music lovers too. All in all it’s a good package for the price it’s being offered.

Spice S-1200
 

Specifications:

• Display: 2.4 inch 320 x 240 pixels, 262,000 colours
• Storage: 70 MB internal, microSD, up to 32GB
• Camera: 12.2 MP, 3x optical zoom, xenon flash, multiple face detector.
• Music formats supported: MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+ player
• Battery: Li-ion 1000mAh
• Price: Rs. 16,990

Spice is usually known to produce phones for the everyday user looking for a budget phone, but they recently released a shocker of a phone – a shocker because the S-1200 is something we’d expect from the likes of Sony Ericsson! The S-1200 comes with a 12.2-megapixel camera that also supports up to 3x optical zoom, and features a Xenon-flash. What’s most impressive about this phone is that when compared to an eight-megapixel digital camera, the outdoor pictures were actually better which means it’s the end of most entry level digital cameras. And for storage it offers up to 32 GB of expandable memory – this should make it ideal for people looking storing lots of music too.

Motorola Backflip

Specifications:

• Display: 320 x 480 pixels, 3.1 inches, TFT capacitive touchscreen, 256K colors (65K effective)
• Storage: 512MB ROM, microSD, up to 32GB, 2GB included
• Camera: 5 MP, 2560 x 1920 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, video 352x288
• Music formats supported: MP3/eAAC+/WAV/WMA9 player
• Battery: Li-Ion 1400 mAh
• Price: Rs.19,000

The Motorola backflip is a very unique phone in terms of design. It comes with a long list of features like a touchpad behind the display, and a keyboard that flips under the display. It has a fairly large memory for music and other multimedia, which constitutes of a 512 MB of onboard storage and support of microSD cards of up to 32GB capacity with a 2GB card that comes bundled with the device. The camera is a 5 MP camera that performs well indoors as well as outdoors.

Sony Ericsson Satio

 
Specifications:

• Display: 360 x 640 pixels, 3.5 inches, TFT touchscreen, 16M colors
• Storage: 128 MB storage, microSD, up to 32GB, 8GB included
• Camera: 12 MP, 4000 x 3000 pixels, autofocus, xenon flash, video LED flash
• Music formats supported: MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+ player
• Battery: Li-Po 1000 mAh
• Price: Rs. 29000

This phone has one of the most powerful cameras that has ever been dropped under a cellphone’s hood. It sports a 12-megapixel camera that supports 720p hd video recording as well. What’s more is that it comes with 2 flashes, one xenon flash for digital images and one LED flash for video recording. And for the music lovers it comes with an 8GB card bundles which can be replaced to up to 32GB. We’ve tested the Satio and found it to be a really nice phone with great quality music playback as well, meaning it can double as a capable MP3 player. But all this does carry a hefty price tag.

Apple iphone 4
 

Specifications:

• Display: 640 x 960 pixels, 3.5 inches, TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
• Storage: 16/32 GB storage, 512 MB RAM
• Camera: 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, Touch focus. Video 720p@30fps
• Music formats supported: AAC (8 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), HE-AAC, MP3 (8 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, 4, Audible Enhanced Audio, AAX, and AAX+), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV
• Battery: Li-Po 1420mAh
• Price: N/a

When talking multimedia phones how can one forget the Apple iPhone. In its latest avatar, the iPhone is a powerful, balanced beast – more powerful than any of its predecessors. It has the highest resolution display in a mobile device, with an in built flash memory that comes in two sizes, either a 16gb or a 32 GB model. With a plethora of music formats that it can support and up to 40 hours of audio playback, it’s the pick of phones when it comes to music playback. Even lossless formats like Apple Lossless (ALAC) are supported. Also apple did not ignore the camera this time, it comes with a 5-megapixel camera, that also supports HD video recording. While availability here is a no-no, we feel Apple will launch the iPhone 4.0 here soon, there’s a lot of demand for it.

The day of convergence has long since dawned. Today, one need not heft around a cellphone, an MP3 player and a digital camera, when one device can suffice for all three needs. Cellphone’s are steadily getting better at multimedia, and while a discrete camera will still produce better quality images or videos, one cannot ignore the fact that convenience is all-important to most people these days. For those who do not need absolute image quality or audio quality and are looking for a single device that satisfies every need – we have you well covered!