It's certainly a funky looking gadget and the Pupillo gained some admiring glances when it first emerged from the packaging. The white and silver clad camera looks like a uber cool kitchen storage jar or a post modern condom, rather than something you'd buy from a mobile phone company. However the slow uptake in 3G video calling has obviously forced Three into making some bolder and perhaps less predictable moves.

In essence the Pupillo is a 352 x 288 pixel webcam, this is well below par compared to even 3 year old VGA webcams, but then its designed for the limited data throughput of the 3G video calling systems. The basic idea is that you call the Pupillo from a 3G handset using video calling and the camera will leap into life giving you a picture on your handset of whatever the camera can see. Fear not if the action is happening to the left or right of the camera, using your phones keypad you can instruct the Pupillo to rotate towards the action and the access to the video stream can be protected by a PIN to stop just anyone connecting.

We set about testing the Three video camera by calling it from a Moto V3X handset and managed to connect first time, the picture was somewhat of a let down and it seems that anything other than bright daylight produces a ropey picture. Turn the lights off altogether and the image switches to a night vision mode, sounds cool, but its really not. Sadly the green tinged shadows that pass for night vision could almost be generated by a screensaver on random mode, this isn't some form of ex military hardware!

The 80 x 94 x 121 mm Pupillo webcam can work with a number of incoming phones (up to 20) but only one user can connect at a time, there is a microphone so you can also hear what's going on and that's when we hit another issue. When connected the Pupillo makes a beeping noise and flashes lights on the front to alert anyone being watched, so bang went any hope of it being a security device.

Battery life is a claimed 4 hours on normal mode and around 3 hours when used in night mode, with a 300 hour standby time, so you'll have to remember to keep it fully charged. We'd have loved it if the unit could have stayed in standby and sent a text to a nominated handset when it detected movement, that might have been useful, but no such luck.

So that's where we end up wondering what exactly the Three Pupillo is for? as a security device it sucks there are far better wireless webcams available, as a basic webcam its no good as the image resolution is to low and its low light performance is pants. Perhaps if the costs were ok then there might be some point in places where you can't extend a cabled or WiFi network and want to see pictures?

At £150 it isn't even cheap, we can get the excellent Linksys WVC54G-UK for nearer £130 and that doesn't incur those expensive video calls. Maybe you'll enjoy showing the Pupillo to your mates as a cool toy but that is all it is, just a Gimmick and you'll soon have it gathering dust in that cupboard that contains all your bad gadget purchases. Avoid!

Published - 25/03/2006

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