Eastman Kodak is bringing the Easyshare-One Wi-Fi Digital Camera with a small delay but in time for the holiday shopping. Originally planned to start shipping the model in June 2005, the company will make the new model available for purchase from October, coinciding with the beginning of the holiday shopping season in North America.
Kodak is working with wireless companies to make sharing pictures as easy and convenient as possible. All Easyshare-One camera purchasers receive a complementary, camera-specific trial service in conjunction with major hotspot providers. In addition to service from T-Mobile USA, with more than 6,000 T-Mobile HotSpots across the United States, Kodak plans to announce further market-specific service providers, as well as retailers that will sell the new camera, in the coming weeks.
The new model will cost a suggested price of US$599, including the Kodak Wi-Fi Card.
Users will be able to e-mail and share pictures on-line without a computer, using a direct, wireless connection to the Kodak Easyshare Gallery service. By connecting to the Gallery through a compatible home home or public wireless network, people can upload pictures and videos for electronic sharing.
The service allows sharing of up to 1,500 favorite pictures, synchronized with a person's PC-based picture collection, thanks to a 3-inch, high resolution, rotating LCD touch screen that's protected when not in use, plus a basic 256 MB (megabytes) of internal memory. When connected wirelessly to the on-line gallery, users can also view their pictures stored online on the camera.
The user interface was developed in Macromedia Flash, which the company says is a first for digital cameras.
The camera comes with SCHNEIDER-KREUZNACH C-VARIOGON 3X optical zoom lens (36 - 108 mm equivalent), a 4-megapixel sensor, and the Kodak Color Science image processing chip.
