The Flip could help people put down their mobile video phones

I’ve been doing a lot of staring at (and thinking about) The Flip —

It’s a small digital camera with just a few buttons. It’s 99 quid and it’s fire-and-forget simple. It takes brilliant quality video and, to get video off the device, you simply plug it into a USB port and bish-bash-bosh, it works. You can then easily edit videos or knock’em straight up to Youtube.

It’s apparently taking America by storm — reckons today’s Telegraph. I can imagine why, especially when most of Middle America is wandering around with, frankly, piece-of-shit mobile phones that do nothing but call, text or shoot absolutely rubbish 120×120 pixel video at 5 frames per second.

In the UK, I wonder how it will get on. The biggest arse with recording video on your mobile phone is getting the content off your handset.

Even the LG Secret, 5 megapixel, top, top quality video phone (thinner, I think, than the Flip) doesn’t have ANY… let’s be clear… ANY easy way of getting videos off the phone.

It’s simply not a priority for LG. I asked the UK Marketing Director about this issue directly — they don’t view it as a problem. If you absolutely HAVE to get content off your phone, you can try Bluetoothing it and waiting tens of minutes or you can plug it in to your computer, sort out the drivers, etc. That’s something I’m fine doing, but your average normob (“normal mobile user”) simply can’t be arsed.

Ergo, there is, perhaps, a massive market for Flip in the UK and Europe. What d’ya reckon? Would you get one?

I’m going to see if I can get hold of a demo unit.