I was out in the garden yesterday, shooting a short sequence on video recording tips for the N70 and N90 for my free Smartphones Show. At the end of the piece, I remarked to camera that I had no doubt that DVD-quality recording on your smartphone was probably less than two years away.
One webcast later and I had to axe that section of my footage. The Nokia N93, announced today, has full VGA (640 by 480 pixel) recording at 30 frames per second, with professional optics, mechanical zoom, easily enough to sideline just about every amateur video camcorder in existence. The resolution's a little puzzling, since footage would have to be resampled later in software (to DVD's 720 by 576 pixel frames), but it's still a generation on from the N70 and N90's 352 by 288 pixel, 15 frames per second video capture.