Pretty much any cell phone you’d buy today comes with a digital camera, but only a few are good enough to take the place of even a cheap point-and-shoot.
It can be tricky to sniff out which phones really fall into that category. Highly advertised features, like a mass of megapixels and multiple settings, do not always add up to a solid camera. But after testing five devices from different manufacturers and wireless carriers, I can suggest some that prove it is indeed possible to get a good cell phone that also takes crystal-clear photos.
My favorite of the bunch is the 8-megapixel Samsung Memoir, which packs an impressive set of camera and phone functions into a slick package.
The Memoir ($200 from T-Mobile with a two-year contract and mail-in rebate, but available for $50 from Amazon.com with a contract) sports a crisp touch screen that is helpful for accessing the camera’s numerous features. Those include mosaic and panorama shooting modes, as well as a feature that can warn you when one of your photo subjects blinked in a picture.
Taking photos is simple with the dedicated capture and zoom buttons on one side. The Memoir’s flash can handle darker scenes fairly well, too.
The Memoir’s built-in editing options let you crop photos, adjust colors or white balance, insert various effects and more. If you forgot to take a certain shot in black and white, no problem — you can adjust it after the fact.
The Memoir has its weak points. It snaps photos slower than another contender I tried, the Palm Pre. And like most of the phones I tested, it lacks optical zoom, which gives more detailed images and lets you shoot from farther away. The Memoir uses a digital “zoom” that simply crops and magnifies what you see on the screen to give…