Kodak claims to have made a ‘quantum leap in the fulfillment of its EasyShare’ vision by launching a digital camera that allows users to email pictures directly from the device.
It’s another example of digital camera makers cutting out the middle man – the PC – so users can distribute pictures quickly and easily.
The EasyShare One, described as the first product of its kind, also allows people to view and organise online albums in the Kodak EasyShare gallery, formerly known as Ofoto, and print wirelessly to a Kodak photo printer. It has a 3in LCD swivel touch screen, a 4 megapixel sensor, 256MB of internal memory and can capture video at ‘TV quality’ 30fps.
The addition of the wireless feature plus the relatively large screen puts additional strain on the battery, but Kodak said it is currently working on minimising the power surge affected when using the Wi-Fi feature. The technology, said a Kodak spokesperson, would be ready in time for the June 2005 launch in the US.
‘The first benefit of photography is to share pictures. The EasyShare One means you can now take [pictures], organise them, share them and print them right from the camera,’ said Pierre Schaeffer, vice president and director of business strategy at Eastman Kodak, at the CES press conference. ‘It takes us from an era of point and shoot to point and share.’
Kodak also announced a partnership with T-Mobile US, allowing owners of the EasyShare One access to the operator’s 5,000 hotspots in the US.
Schaeffer said the release of the new product would be another important technology milestone for Kodak, which claims to have invented the first digital camera 30 years ago, and released the first product onto the market in 1995.
The UK release date and price were not immediately available, but the EasyShare One is due to cost $599 in the US from June.
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