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Review: Cricket MSGM8 II

Form Basics Extras Video Tour Wrap-Up Comments 1

Multimedia Camera Image Quality Browse / Customize Extras

Camera

It's tough to jump into the camera quickly on the Cricket MSGM8 II. Pressing the camera button (seriously, it has a little camera on it) takes you to the multimedia menu, where "Camera" is the first choice. From there, it's a 3-4 second wait for the camera to open. The camera has plenty of options available on screen, but none of these will help to make your pictures any better. You can reduce the resolution or the picture quality. Since there's no removable storage, that might be a real concern to save some space. You can adjust white balance, but this adds some garish tones to images. There are also greyscale, negative and sepia filters, among a long list of silly looking picture frames.

To snap a shot, you can press the 4-way button or the camera button on the side. Then, you get to review the picture, but you can't manage the image or send it anywhere yet, for that you'll need to see the image gallery. After another few seconds, you're ready to snap your next shot.

The camera on the Cricket MSGM8 II does not have a video mode. Even though Cricket advertises unlimited video messages for the MSGM8 II, there is no way to record video on this phone.

Image Gallery

The image gallery on the phone is very simple. You can view pics, or you can send them along. You can view your pics as thumbnails, or see an inhospitable list of image file names. From the gallery you can also send MMS messages, or you can push the files over Bluetooth. In fact, Bluetooth is the only way to get images off the phone, but it worked just fine in my tests. I was able to batch select all of my image files and transfer them all at once over Bluetooth. They came through quickly and with no trouble.

You can view photos one at a time on the Cricket MSGM8 II. Images don't look horrible on the phone's wishy-washy screen, but that flickering effect still lingers. You can't edit photos, not even rotating or cropping. There's no zoom option, either, and even flicking from one photo to the next can involve a long wait.

Next page: Image Quality

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ZTE MSGM8 II

2.2" display 220 x 176 pixels
900 mAh battery
Hardware Text Keyboard

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