What Is The Cell Phone Video Conferencing Feature?

With the new 3G mobile phones, comes a whole new raft of cellular services. One new feature, cell phone video conferencing, looks like it’s going to be one of the hits.

Being able to see people while you talk to them certainly has obvious advantages and now that cell phone video conference technology is improving, many more of us will be able to do just that.

We already love to send and receive pictures on our cell phones and take advantage of our handsets that have a built-in camera and full color display. Well, now multimedia messaging technology and video messaging are on the increase as well, but these are recordings of course, not live transmissions to your cell phone.

Video calling is done live, and is sometimes known as “face-to-face”. The new 3G cell phones can accomplish this with ease, but keep in mind that these types of calls are less affordable than regular voice calls.

The latest two-way video conferencing cellular software for the likes of Nokia smartphones and other brands differs as you can see not only the face of whoever you are talking to but also your own offset in part of your phone’s screen - to see what they can see; and both images are live pictures.

Currently even the best cellular efforts means that phones can only manage this between two callers at once, but the recent advance by leading cellular phone making company LG means that will all be about to change.

LG call it PTV (push-to-view) and it means that users can send real time video from their phone to more than one caller simultaneously, and that those receiving can also join in the video conference with their own pictures sent to everyone else.

These multi-user video conferencing phones should start to be sold in the summer of 2005.

Also see; glossary of cell phone terms.

Author Notes:

Matt Jacks contributes and publishes news editorial to http://www.cell-phones-n-plans.com. A cellular phone industry resource featuring service plan comparisons, cell phone reviews and informative articles.