Most cell phones these days have built-in cameras. It’s a fact of modern life that pictures can be taken anywhere and everywhere within reach of your pocket. That’s why marketing a phone based on its camera feature, as Sony Ericsson has done with its C510 Cyber-shot, seems like an odd idea. Odd, that is, until you realize what this little phone’s camera is capable of.

The C510 Cyber-shot offers a 3.2 megapixel camera, which doesn’t sound as impressive as your 12 megapixel DSLR, but it’s really pretty good for a phone. Not only that, but it includes all the features of a non-telecommunications-based digital camera, such as auto-focus and face detection. It’s also got post-production capabilities built in for things like photo fixing, image geo-tagging (which records time, date, and location at which they were taken), and easy video or picture blogging for use in our modern world. With this in mind, the phone features integrated applications for Facebook and YouTube, so that you never have to be out of touch. So it’s a camera phone, yes, but it’s also a digital tool that’s smaller than a regular smart phone. When you think of it like that, it doesn’t seem odd at all; in fact, it makes a whole lot of sense.

Sony Ericsson C510 Cyber-shot, $79 with Rogers three-year contract. See sonyericsson.com for more information.