Sony Japan creates TX300V TransferJet/WiFi camera with inductive charging

Oh WOW - at LAST someone (clever old Sony, go figure) has worked out, that with INDUCTIVE charging and WIFI, and presumably CAPACITIVE touch controls, you can effectively build a sealed, no-weak point, camera.

Without the headphone socket, dock slot and buttons, the iPhone (and iPad/iPod touch) could SO nearly have been "sealed" devices, capable of indefinite immersion in water or worse. But it looks Sony got there first. WOOOP! Want one.

Brian

I think this is a smart move for Sony (and all compact camera manufacturers). Compact camera sales have been in decline because everyone has a decent, but not great, camera built into their phones. Their phones allow them to share to Facebook, Twitter etc. The only advantages a pocket cam still has is a good lens, image quality and somewhat better flash capability. Allowing the transfer of 2MB pics to iOS and Android phones from the camera allows consumers to take photos of a higher quality (in theory) and also share them easily and quickly.

This will be the only way the pocket cam can survive for the next couple of years. It's a losing battle though, eventually the lenses on phones will match pocket cams and then pocket cams will become redundant.

Not that I will buy the camera but applaud SONY for thinking out of the box. I think it is in their DNA to do things differently.

I don't want contactless, it's just another thing to go wrong, and as ever with wireless technologies you can't troubleshoot it in any meaningful fashion.

Yay, it's not charging. Is the base dead? Is the device dead? Is the battery dead? Who knows. You certainly won't, unless you just happen to have spares for all of them.

Does that mean we also get the added pointless annoyance of a non-removable battery too?

If they come out with TransferJet capable phone, you could velcro the camera to the back of the phone and have a decent cameraphone for a change

The charging station would be a minor nicety for me. The image/video downloading can't match match my Eye-Fi, I don't think, so it's useless to me. Wifi again is already in my Eye-Fi so I don't care, but I do notice that it only transfers 2mp images so I can't imagine who would want it. People who want 2mp images aren't forking out over $500 for a pocket cam. They can keep this thing in Japan as far as I'm concerned.

I honestly don't get the point of so called contactless charging. It's not contactless if you need to put it on the pad? Unless I misunderstood something there. I mean it's like, sure, the wire's gone, but now you have this pad you have to put somewhere and I'm assuming you still have to plug in something somewhere to power the pad, so you're not saving outlet space either.

docking stations for cameras has often been a failure... but the wifi data transfer built in is smart