[A tutorial on "picture spamming" with the Sanyo 8100.]

by Jean Panke, MobileTechNews -- We've been sending so many pictures with our new Sanyo 8100, we've started referring to them as "picture spams." With the 8100, we can set up an e-mail listing and select one person, a select few, or everyone on our list to "spam" with photos. Here's a list of fun and helpful things the Sanyo 8100 has allowed us to do the past few weeks: 1) send photos of a grandchild blowing out his birthday candles to an uncle out West and a great-grandmother in the Midwest. 2) emailed a photo of a complex engine problem on our airplane to our mechanic in Virginia, 3) took lots of pictures during a recent beach week-end and spammed everybody in the Midwest we could think of (this technology is really fun!), 4) took a picture of a visiting grandson and emailed it to my PC so he could view his picture instantly, 4) sent pictures of a prospective house we were hoping to buy to family for their feedback and approval, 5) got a picture of a friend's lunch (a plate of Chinese food accompanied by chopsticks and tea) with a fun audio message attached. This is great stuff!

This new technology has really appealed to everyone we've shown the handset to. It's neat to think about how it's helping break down the barriers of distance and space in helping people stay connected in almost real-time in a very real way. It gives a whole new meaning to the words "wish you were here!"

How to take a picture: 1) Open clamshell and press CAMERA button twice to activate camera mode. Aim the phone using the main LCD as a viewfinder and press CAMERA button. With this handset, you can even program it to "say cheese" before you snap the photo. After snapping the photo you can either KEEP it or DISCARD it. If you choose to save it, you can go ahead and email it or upload it. You can also keep on shooting pictures and just keep saving them in your handset. When it's time to view them, just highlight the REVIEW/SHARE on your menu and press MENU OK. Using the navigation keys you can scroll through and view your saved pics. In this mode you can also share your photos by uploading them to the Picture Mail Web site, add captions, and more. You can assign pics to various functions like identifying a specific caller with a photo ID or use one of your pics as a screen saver.

Setting up your Picture Mail Web site with Sprint PCS Vision is pretty fast and easy. You just need to come up with an alpha-numeric password (yeah, just the same one you use for everything else will work) and then press MENU OK. Once you receive confirmation you can just keep uploading and sharing pictures. Once you're set up, you can even view and manage your pics online or on your phone by pressing the CAMERA button and selecting Online Pics.

E-mailing your pics: Once you're account is all set up you can go ahead and hit the REVIEW/SHARE mode, select picture and press SHARE. Next select who on your list you want to receive the picture, or heck you can just "picture spam" the entire list all at once and then press MENU OK. Then press DONE and record a voice mail up to 10 seconds to send along with the photo (this is really cool). To record a message, highlight INCLUDE, press MENU OK and start recording when you hear the beep, it will also beep when your ten seconds is up. You can also highlight DON'T INCLUDE and press MENU OK if you don't want to send a voice memo, or use your keypad to enter a text message or select a message from CANNED MESSAGES or RECENT MESSAGES and press MENU OK. Then press the SEND and your photo is on its way.

Receiving these pictures is pretty neat, too. You bring up the picture just like you would any typical email message and there it is. Now you can click on message and hear the audio portion. You can also click on COMMENT and return a message to the sender.

One note, if any of your recipients are not receiving their "spam pics," it may be because their spam software is not letting the pics through. In that case they need to enter a line of code to clear the way.

Besides taking pictures, the Sanyo 8100 along with Sprint's PCS Vision service offers lots of other great features we've come to know and expect in our mobile handsets. Things like an internal phone book, voicemail, call waiting, call forwarding, three-way calling, voice command, text messaging, games, and web access. All in all, we've really enjoyed this handset. The sound is great, it's small and easy to fit in a shirt pocket with room to spare.

Oh by the way, we forgot to tell you about the little alien that tends to run across the bottom of the screen every once in a while. Yeah, he's really supposed to be there.

For more info on this handset, we recommend: http://www.mobiletechnews.com/info/2003/04/24/134311.html

Also, if you would like a sample of what a picture looks like coming at you via email, just send us your email address and we'll be happy to "picture spam" you. It's the least we can do for our loyal readership...and thanks for MobileTeching!

Back to Headlines...