Convergence takes another step forward with Pantec's latest CDMA phone. Not just a camera phone, it's a phone, MP3 player, and 2.1 MP camera with optical character recognition.
Korean buyers will soon have a new all-in-one device available in the form of the Pantec PH-K1500, combining a phone, camera, and MP3 player.
 | The PH-K1500 is part phone, part camera, part MP3 player
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The PH-K1500 starts as a CDMA 1xRTT slider phone measuring 94 x 48 x 23 mm and weighing 127 grams, somewhat hefty for a phone. Part of that weight is the battery, which is rated for 170 minutes talk time or 190 hours standby. The rest is taken up by the devices other features.
As with a slowly growing number of Asian phones, the PH-K1500 includes a 2.1 megapixel digital camera with auto-focus, built-in flash. That already puts it ahead of most camera phones on the market, but the PH-K1500 goes a step farther by including optical character recognition (OCR) functionality. That allows the user to take a picture of a business card, for instance, and have the phone scan the image, extract the textual information, and create an address book entry based on the information on the card.
Not surprisingly the phone also supports photo caller ID, as well as up to 60 minutes of video recording with stereo AAC sound. Multi-shot capabilities are provided up to 15 shots in a row, and 11-step zooming rounds out the camera functions.
The phone, if it can still be called that, also includes an MP3 player. On-screen displays show the ID3 tag for a given song as well as, if available, the lyrics of the current song. What is unclear, however, is where the user will store those songs. The device includes 128 MB of ROM and 64 MB of RAM, but does not list any sort of expansion card.
The Pantec PH-K1500 will be available in December for about $500 USD exclusively in South Korea.
Additional high-resolution images of the PH-K1500 are available on the following pages.
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