Can you hear me? I said, 'say cheese.'.(Up front: news / trends / advise)(camera-equipped cell phones)(Product/Service Evaluation)

Ads for the hot new camera-equipped cell phones suggest you can get crisp, clear images that would make Ansel Adams proud. Reality isn't quite so clearly focused, we learned from testing the first camera phones available in the U.S. and allied service from AT&T, Cingular, Sprint, and T-Mobile. (Verizon introduced its service just as we were going to press.)

Prices range from $50 to $400; hefty rebates are common We'd recommend only the Sanyo phone used with the PCS Vision service from Sprint, That's the only phone-and-service combination that made it easy to send photos to other Sprint phones or to computers as e-mail attachments Sprint also provides photo-storage space on the Internet.

The take on the cameras. They produce images that look fine on the phone's color display, but fuzzy if they're enlarged. Images are made of only a few hundred thousand pixels, not the millions used in regular digital cameras. These camera phones have a basic nonzoom lens and use the phone's display as the viewfinder.

Display size ranges from 1 1/2, inches on the Sony Ericsson to a hair over 2 inches on the Nokia and Panasonic That's small for picture viewing. We judged the usability of the display in bright light outdoors, comparing them with a cell phone that has a monochrome display, None equaled the clarity of that display.

The take on the phones. The Sanyo offered by Sprint has the edge, based on our initial tests. (We'll have a full report on the phone performance in February 2004.) Camera and phone menus are easy to navigate The Sanyo was the only tested one with analog backup, watch betters the odds of reaching 911 in an emergency.

The others all have some drawbacks For example, the Nokia's keys are laid out oddly and its menus are complex. The Samsung has a big button on the front that's dedicated to accessing the T-Mobile Web browser. (On other phones, a similar button lets you select several functions) The Sony Ericsson's keys are small and cramped; its display, very low resolution.

Expect at least seven hours of talk time from the Sony Ericsson, three to four hours from the others.