The instructions in the manual are so vague that it is pitiful. Completely lacking in professionalism. It turns out, that if my phones camera is set to the maxium resolution, the zoom is disabled. I discovered this purely by accident while trying to capture several shots of something. I wanted to get each shot onto memory, so I lowered the resolution to shrink file size, and thus, increase memory capacity.
Suddenly, there were icons for features such as zoom. Also, with the naked eye, you can now see the visual difference between portrait and macro settings for the lens.
My phone is the Audiovox 8920 provided by Sprint. It has an 1.3 megapixal camera and a very good speakerphone. I suggest the extended battery, even though Consumers Reports magazine rated it as one of Sprints best for talk time. And yes, I also would reccommend Verizon or Cingular over Sprint any day. My being stuck with a two year agreement is the only reason I'm still with them.
Update: I had to stop by the Sprint store to get someone to explain why the pictureID didn't seem to work either. It turns out it actually doesn't. So, the rep. immediately ordered me a replacement that will arrive next Friday. I was impressed with their hassle-free customer service, and relieved that they weren't going to give me the run-around. This phone is turning out to be pretty damn nice after all.
UPDATE#2: Oh! What excellent photographs can be made with a 1.3 cameraphone. This thing rocks! I'm not joking, during a management meeting in another city at a new store unit, I took 54 excellent photographs under vary mixed lighting conditions that were superb. Then, uploaded all in one batch. The upload of that many, of course, wasn't without a hitch.
I suggest only uploading about twenty at a time. Upload the first few, then delete the ones uploaded - then, select Upload All to do the rest.
Also of note, don't expect to see anything on the screen in bright sunlight with this phone - it completely disappears!
Again, Another UPDATE: The tech reps at the Sprint Store could get the images to assign as pictureID's, but, they fail to mention one important detail. If, when entering phone numbers into your address book you use a 1 prefix, the phone will not recognize incoming calls as those in your phone book. But, in the manual it instructs you twice to prefix everything with a 1. If you happen to have free roaming for five dollars a month(yes, an oxymoron !) you have to have a 1 prefix in order to dial out on on other peoples networks. Which, brings to mind the other oxymoron - Sprint proudly boasts as its dominate marketing pitch the most complete all digital nationwide network!
