HP PhotoSmart C20 (1998)

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The Photosmart C20 was announced 1998-02-12. Compared to to it's predecessor, the Photosmart, it underwent a complete design change. The bulkiness was gone and the C20 became a cute compact digital camera. They dropped Intel's miniature card and implemented a compact flash card slot instead. Good thinking there. HP also listened to consumer demands and put an LCD screen in the back and kept the oprical viewfinder. A new sensor finally elevated the resolution to 1152x872 pixels and therefore could keep up with other models.

There are some strong hints that Konica also made this and later models although no other OEM version has surfaced so far (Konica's concurring model of that time was the Q-M100 and looks nothing like the C20) but people keep repeating that these are all OEM models from Konica. I agree the specs are almost the same so I took my C20 and opened it up and it revealed that this camera has chips inside from Konica, NEC and Ricoh. The breadboard of the camera was small enough to fit a Konica Q-M100. Again the Konica was marketed a year earlier than the HP. Therefore I conclude that Konica did contribute the breadboard for the camera but it is far from being a true OEM model. The cosmetic differences and the GUI of the camera are too far apart from each other. This is the reason why they are not included in my OEM page on this website.

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