It’s not that we hate what T-Mobile was trying to do. It’s that they pushed out an inferior frame, made by Parrot, and charged an excessive price for both the hardware and service. Total cost of ownership in year one is $220, followed by $120 per year thereafter. The poor economy has nothing to do with it, that’s just flat out expensive and silly, considering there are many services and frames that accomplish the same thing for a better price – free.

The carrier networks make sense in some ways for a project like this, but the cost more than offsets any ease of use gains by using a mobile network instead of WiFi. T-Mobile hasn’t made an official announcement, but we expect to see this project mothballed entirely and it’s unlikely other carriers will be rushing to get in the digital picture frame space any time soon.

Last month T-Mobile quietly announced the Cameo, a 7″ digital frame with GPRS service on the T-Mobile network, which means you can send the frame pictures straight from your phone using the carrier’s network. The frame runs $100 and the service $10/month. It seems a little pricey to look at pictures taken with a mobile phone and it sounds like they still have to work to do to refine the service.

Peter Svensson with the AP was able to spend some time with the Cameo and while he thought it was generally easy to use, the frame wasn’t without problems. A big one being that in addition to the monthly service fees for the frame, you also must have a T-Mobile calling plan to use the frame. The frame can accept pictures from other carriers, but you still have to maintain a voice plan or the frame will cease working, wirelessly at least. 

The frame also struggled with receiving pictures from the new G1, the phone powered by Google’s new mobile operating system. Parrot, who makes the frame, claims these issues should be fixable by T-Mobile. But for $120/year and the phone plan requirement, we’re still far from impressed with this offering. [via AP]

T-Mobile is said to be close to releasing a digital picture frame they’re calling Cameo. The highlight is the fact that it includes a SIM card and can receive data over the T-Mobile network. For $100 you can buy the frame and for another $10/month, you can send pictures directly to the frame from your mobile phone.

Whether or not people will pay $120/year for this service is debatable. Similar services are available via Wi-Fi connections and even email, but the masses haven’t adopted the idea. This is a little different, because it leverages the ubiquitous camera-enabled mobile phone. The fees are steep though and it remains to be see how good the frame is on it’s own. Either way, this is a fun extension of digital frames as they currently stand. [via CellPhone Signal]

T-Mobile Cameo Specs

• High-resolution digital TFT screen with 720 x 480 pixels
• GPRS Class 10 (dual band) for transferring photos from a phone
• Mini USB port (for transferring photos from a PC)
• SD/MMC card slot (for transferring photos directly from a camera)
• Stores up to 500 photos
• Automatically adapts the picture size to the screen
• Brightness adjustment
• Automatically rotates the picture (portrait/landscape)
• Adjustable backlight (manual or automatic)
• External frame with an interchangeable leather surround