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I have had a bad impression about mobile phones photography capabilities since the 2005 when the first so-called camera phones have started to emerge. The low-res, blurry, with a shifted and terrible wrong colors images that was coming out of the tiny greasy holes on the back of the mobile phones were the mockery of the sole idea of the digital photography.

Now, with the mobile camera modules like the one in the Apple iPhone 3GS, I must admit that the mobile photography at least as much acceptable as a lomography. Though, it’s still a pain to look at such photos without a postprocessing on a bigger computer. May be the future smartphones with high-res displays and the gigahertz of CPU and GPU power like in modern iPhone 4 will allow to postprocess photos on the go. It’s a software problem, after all.

Finally replaced battery charger for my BLS-1 Olympus batteries. The old one was lost by the friends of mine somewhere in Spain. The new one is a quite interesting thingy – the universal battery charger made by Enkatsu (I have used some Enkatsu LiIon batteries and they are very good, sometimes even better than original branded ones).

The universality of this charger works pretty simple. All you need is a charger base that is universal and an “optionally required” plate that is designed to fit your particular type of batteries. It makes chances to find needed charger in the next door retail outlet much fattier because it’s easier for retailer to keep in stock a pile of cheap and relatively small plates for almost any camera brand than a designated chargers.

For example, you can grab a Delkin universal charger at Amazon and pick any of a dozen+ plates to fit your DSLR or EVIL or camcorder battery. And if you have two or more different types of LiIon batteries to work with, you can save some space in you luggage by bringing just one charger and a different plates for you stuff.

I think I should start with the statement that the LG GW300 is not anything like that nice Google Nexus One or Motorola Droid smartphones that everyone are buzzing about. GW300 is a pretty simple (comparatively) QWERTY mobile handset without any fancy 3G, online applications repository and GPS capabilities. Mobile phone on a budget, that’s it.

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A couple of days ago I forgot to check the pockets of my jeans before laundry. The weather was slushy all Autumn so I set up my washing machine for super wash at 90 Celsius with an extra rinsing. Two and a half hours later I took out perfectly clean jeans and discovered my keys and my flash drive in the machine’s drum.

A cheap 2Gb flash drive was working fine for me for more than two years. It was branded like A-data MyFlash, but I have never seen another A-data products anywhere. So I left it on a table to dry up and on a next day tried to stick it into USB port. And it worked! I have made a full backup with no errors.

Last week my Nokia 2630 battery failed. The new one was lasting twelve hours on one charge too. So I have decided to get a new mobile phone. Having a not-so-good experience with Nokia and Philips brands and feeling upset of wasting US$150 on a gadget that have worked for just five months I have tried to find a really budget solution.

Fortunately, we have the other brands in this segment: Motorola, LG and Samsung. The first two are too bulky, in my taste. And Samsung have rolled out three new low-end models a month before: E1070, E1100 and E1125. Last two models haven’t hit the shelves yet, but the first one is already available for about US$39.

I have bought Samsung E1070 and played with it for a week for now. What’s good:

• The size. It’s quite fatty with its 15mm but short and narrow comparing to the other modern mobiles. Fits well in my Wolverine jeans lighter pocket.
• 100 memory slots for text messages.
• Nice and handy phone book (200 memory slots).
• Five alarm clocks you can program to go off on a given days of week.
• Nice battery life. Haven’t tested it “scientifically” but I think E1070 could work for a week between charges easily.
• Pretty compact supplied charger.

What’s wrong? Well, Samsung E1070 is cheap, budget, low-end. Nothing wrong, actually.