I'd like to see
I'd like to see real world pictures from these "8 MPix" camera phones...
What I do know is that the 1.3 Mpix camera on my Samsung takes noisy, blandly colored and soft, not quite sharp (that's usually the noise reduction's fault in real cameras) pictures. They are "acceptable", in the sense that I can see what's in the picture and all that. Usable in an emergency maybe, but only that. I'd like to see expensive camera phone pictures to know if they can be any good.
Re: the MPix count war, that is ridiculous, and not just for the reasons given above. First of all, if you're printing 10x15cm (4x6in) then 2 MPix is more than enough in a real camera -- I've done that with a little Canon some 5 or 6 years ago, and you can see artifacts when printing 15x20cm (8x6in) if you pay quite some attention. For posting to the web, even 2Mpix is overkill -- if the picture is well taken. More pixels are good if the photo is to be cropped, but I wonder how many people go to that trouble with their drunk party pictures. And if you crop, you'd better have a good quality image or you will have an ugly, noisy crop. Like the ones from my camera phone, which I've used only a little to see how it performed and haven't bothered ever since (carry a real, point-and-shoot(ish) camera in my backpack anyway).