Mobile snaps: Casio's latest cell phone, the CA005, just released by KDD's mobile phone service "au by KDDI," offers two products in one. A typical glossy clamshell mobile phone, the CA005 also packs a 13-megapixel camera into its sharply rectangular form. The phone's camera features smile detection and a fast "burst-shooting" (continuous shooting) rate, which is rare even for compact cameras. Being a cell-phone camera, there is no room for an optical zoom but the wide 28 mm lens does have a 3x digital zoom. Despite Casio's deserved reputation for good optics, however, the camera mode's megapixel count isn't enough to make this a camera replacement. The lens is limited and sensors in cell phones are a shadow of those in a compact camera. This is still a distinct upgrade on camera modes in rival cell phones, and is good enough to use to take simple snapshots.

As a phone, the CA005 has all the necessities — an 8.12-cm VGA screen, GPS, Bluetooth, 500 megabytes of memory and is compatible with microSD and SDHC cards. It also has a one almost-useless feature: 1Seg TV, (watching TV on such a tiny screen is virtually pointless). Perhaps aping the tough qualities of Casio's G-Shock brand of watches, the CA005 is water resistant with a battery life of 320 hours on standby and 290 minutes of talking. Fashionably svelte at 110x50x14.5 cm and weighing only 124 grams, it's available in a range of seven eye-catching colors.

The CA005 is a good option for those people who care about taking decent snapshots, but who can't carry a camera with them at all times. As with all cell phones, the cost of the CA005 is usually buried in the details of the myriad contracts on offer. For further information, check: k-tai.casio.jp/products/ca005/) www.au.kddi.com/seihin/ichiran/kishu/ca005/)