If you are a regular cell phone user with no intention of signing up for a data plan, there are currently four phones that will serve your extraordinary camera needs: The unlocked Nokia N85, the Sony Ericsson C905 on AT&T as well as the Motorola Zine ZN5 and Samsung Memoir on T-Mobile. If Verizon Wireless is your preferred carrier, there's now the Casio Exilim C721 that offers a decent camera performance in a rugged package. Before we get into the details of these phones, it's worth noting that Sprint does not currently offer a specific phone where the word quality fits into the picture.
Camera comparison
(Based on infoSync test results) |
| Phone |
Image |
Video |
Management |
Specs |
| S/E C905 |
Very Good |
Good |
Very Good |
- 8MP sensor
- QVGA video
- Xenon flash
- Auto Focus
- 150MB storage |
| Nokia N85 |
Very Good |
Very Good |
Very Good |
- 5MP sensor
- VGA video
- Dual LED flash
- Auto Focus
- 8GB storage |
| Memoir |
Very Good |
Good |
Good |
- 8MP sensor
- WVGA video
- Xenon Flash
- Auto Focus
- 1GB storage |
| Zine ZN5 |
Very Good |
Good |
Good |
- 5MP CMOS sensor
- CIF video
- Xenon Flash
- Auto Focus
-1GB storage |
| Exilim C721 |
Good |
Good |
Mediocre |
- 5MP sensor
- QVGA video
- 3x optical zoom
- Dual LED flash
- Auto Focus |
| Graphics by infoSync World |
At 8-megapixels, the Sony Ericsson C905 instantly takes its place in the rarified strata of high-megapixel phones on the market. The C905 leapfrogs the rest of AT&T's lineup, and sits among an elite few truly dedicated camera phones. The phone is well designed for camera use. When you slide open the lens cover on the back, the camera comes to life, and shortcut buttons all over the phone light up soft blue. There are buttons on top to switch to camcorder mode or to launch the photo gallery. On the front of the phone, two buttons up top help navigate the scene modes and shooting preferences. Hidden icons on the 4-way button let you adjust flash, macro mode, white balance and the self-timer in a hurry. We hardly see this level of shortcut control on a dedicated compact camera, let alone a camera phone.
Of course, all of these controls would do little good without impressive image quality to back them up, and we're happy to say that in most respects, the Sony Ericsson C905 delivers. With more and more 8-megapixel shooters on the market, we're starting to get a feel for what to expect from these lenses. The C905 does a great job in broad daylight, with crystal clear images that show great color and depth of field. The camera does its best work close up, and though landscape shots looked good, at full crop you'll notice a lack of detail in the grass and the trees.
Indoors, the Sony Ericsson C905 held its own, but even in a sunlit room, colors looked pale and washed out. Details also grew fuzzy, especially up close. The flash did a fine job lighting up our shots, and the Xenon flash on the C905 does a much better job than the LED flash you'll find on other cameras.
For shooting modes, the Sony Ericsson C905 gets a nice mix, but nothing too extensive. There is a macro mode for close-ups, a panorama mode to stitch together 3 frames into one long image, and scene modes for sports or for photographing text on a document. For shooting, the camera has a "Smart Contrast" mode that brightens up underexposed areas, especially in shots with a dominating backlight. This definitely helped in a pinch, but it gave our pics a very washed out look. To help correct some of these issues, the Sony Ericsson C905 also has PhotoDJ software, which allows for some retouching and some automatic level-setting in images. The camera also has face detection built in to make sure faces stay in focus against the background.
In the end, the Sony Ericsson C905 won't compete with the best compact cameras on the market, but it could certainly give you a reason to leave your compact at home if you're going to be outside, or if you just don't need great image quality enough to carry two devices. Photos from the C905 were definitely good enough to print at an 8 by 10 inch size, and were more than adequate for any online use. Check out our image samples below for some of the best pics we got out of the Sony Ericsson C905 in our test run.
Texas Sunflower
Wildflower and tiny bee
End of Spring flowers
Landscape path
Seed pod and bugs
Self Portrait
Amid the tall grass
Panorama shot
Buttercup close up
Rusty lock
Firehouse Subs
4th of July Fireworks
Yellow Light Cycle
Orchids, with flash
Indoor Orchid close up
We're always ready to be skeptical of cameraphone lenses, but the camera on our Nokia N85 review unit allayed our fears and took some fantastic pictures, among the best we've seen from a cameraphone. The 5-megapixel, auto focus shooter springs to life when you snap open the lens cover, a nice start that helped keep the lens safe and clean. We weren't thrilled with the dual LED flash. Two LEDs didn't make for twice the picture quality in low light conditions. However, under good lighting, our pictures came out looking great, vibrant and sharp, with perfectly accurate colors and just enough detail. These are pics good enough for printing. Check out our favorite samples below.
Snowy Town Square
Bark Close-Up
Self Portrait
Lady Bug and Fingerprints
Wildflower
Wildflower and Lady Bug
Rusted Lock
We'd like some more camera features. Uploading photos was easy, and the phone comes with presets to upload directly to Flickr, Ovi and other services. Uploads were a bit sluggish, and we could only upload one pic at a time, but otherwise uploading went smoothly. Still, we wish there were more in-camera features. We think this great camera could make some great panoramas, and we wish there were more cool shooting features in that veign.
Video recording quality was also very good. The phone can record DVD quality videos, meaning VGA (640 by 480 pixels) resolution at 30fps. In our tests, videos actually looked very good. Motion was smooth, with none of the watery effects we've seen on inferior cams. Colors looked accurate, if a bit bland, and the camcorder did a nice job handling backlighting and more complex lighting situations. Also, we liked having plenty of memory on board to handle long recording times.
Under the best lighting conditions, the Samsung Memoir's camera did a fine job, though there were still glaring problems. Pictures were definitely print worthy, which is a rarity on cameraphones, but even a mediocre 8-megapixel point-and-shoot camera will produce better results. If you're looking to pick up a cheap extra camera, as a sidearm for a more advanced DSLR, perhaps, this wouldn't be a bad choice. Or, if you're a real cameraphone nut who snaps loads of pics with your mobile device, this is definitely one of the best cameraphones on the market. It edges out the Motorola Zine ZN5, a 5-megapixel T-Mobile compatriot, but only barely, and both phones suffer under poor lighting conditions.
One Room Schoolhouse
This is a good, clear shot taken on a bright, sunny day. There is some evidence of oversharpening, especially in the bricks and the high branches, and there's more color noise than we'd like to see in the blue sky. Still, a noble effort.
Schoolhouse Front
The bright sky has destroyed this picture. Not only in the branches at the top, which have exploded with purple fringing to a degree we would never find acceptable in even a cheap point-and-shoot. Even the rich, red bricks are washed out and hazy looking here.
Macro Bricks
Great close-up work here. We wish we could have gotten even closer, as we were still a few inches from the subject, but the detail is excellent, especially in the focal center.
Antique Windows
Dog Indoors
The indoor dog shot is okay until we zoom into a full crop. The fur still has some fine detail, but as we work out way to the end of the picture, as it were, we start to see not only noise, but also some strange, cartoonish greens and pinks showing up incorrectly in the dogs haunches.
Dog Outdoors
Our dog doesn't like hydrants, at least not in that special dog way. The camera, on the other hand, did a nice job of exposing the freshly-painted bright red. This is actually an accurate representation – the hydrant really is that color.
Needles
Under natural sunlight, the Samsung Memoir completely overexposes the center of this evergreen bush. There's some nice depth of field here, but this would have been a much better shot if the camera hadn't blown the subject and lost all detail to bright light.
Sunny Self Portrait
A good enough self portrait. We're still disappointed with the lack of detail in our scraggly beard hairs and fuzzy, cashmere cap.
Vegetables
Peppers
Tangerines
Inside, our local Whole Foods market has dramatic lighting for the produce, and the Samsung Memoir just couldn't handle the effect. The carrots in the first shot and the yellow peppers in the second are overexposed and bright white. On the periphery of the peppers, the tomatoes are drab and brown looking, which is not how they were in person.
Night Portrait at 1600 ISO
Night Portrait with Flash
Without the flash, we cranked up the ISO sensitivity on the Samsung Memoir to the alleged 1600 level, and this shot is the best we could get. We were standing near a street lamp at the time, which makes this all the more confusing, as the sensor seems to have hardly picked us up at all. With the Xenon flash turned on, we're a bit pale, but the camera at least captured our deer-in-headlights stare. Still, that green jacket is actually light beige in person.
Tiny Scene in Light Tent
eBay Shot
Set to automatic white balance, this shot was rendered unacceptably yellow. Since we were using studio fluorescent lamps, we set the white balance to fluorescent, and instead got these pics, both of which are warm to the point of being nearly purple. The first shot was more of a problem, and we think the pink figurine might have screwed up the color even further.
The eBay shot, on the other hand, is among the best we've seen with a cameraphone. The Samsung Memoir captured a great level of detail, including plenty of scuffs and scratches that are difficult to see with the naked eye.
The Samsung Memoir has a panorama mode, but it failed in our tests. After a full day of shooting, none of our panorama images were present among the sample shots we took.
Photo Management
Though the Samsung Memoir boasts a nice selection of photo uploading and management options, in practice these were hardly worth bragging about since they were mostly confusing or they simply failed to work. The phone uses two separate photo viewers. One is accessible from the camera itself, and one you can reach from the main menus or widgets screen. This seemed redundant, and the two viewers shared some features and split some features between them.
We tried e-mailing pics and sending them to our personal Flickr page. Though the phone claims to be able to handle both these tasks, neither worked properly. Our pictures never arrived in our inbox, and never showed up on our Flickr photostream.
When we got around to printing glossy test image samples directly from the Motorola Zine, we quickly realized that this phone was capable of producing images that we might actually want to print. They weren't perfect, but the level of detail, the color accuracy and the lack of serious problems in these images impressed us.
Fruit on display
The image isn't perfect, but it looks pretty nice, with a wide, dynamic range that lets the dark spots stay dark, with lively color all around. At full zoom, we see some over-sharpening, giving a television effect to the shiny spots on the fruit. Also, there's a little fuzz that isn't natural, but rather a lack of detail. In the corners, where the hanging signs and lights were not themselves well-lit, we see loads of compression artifacts and noise, resulting in blurry, fuzzy lines. But how about them apples?
Self-portrait
The shot is pleasantly-lit, with life-like color and good detail in this editor's graying hair (can you pick out the white strands at the temple?). Unfortunately, the background is again noisy, and details, like the writing on the flash card reader behind us, were fuzzed out.
Gazebo
Gazebo (with Perfect Touch)
Here's an example of Kodak's Perfect Touch system doing some good work. First, we shot the gazebo with the White Balance set to "Cloudy." This gave us a somewhat reddish tone, probably as the camera tried to warm up the light issuing from the cooler clouds. The Kodak Perfect Touch enhancement, available in the viewing gallery on the phone, lightened up the dark spots, and also helped with this pinkish cast on the original. This resulted in loads of noise, especially in the darkest spots, like the bushes to the left of the structure, and this noise could be quite colorful and distracting. Still, for lighting, Perfect Touch seems to do a nice job.
Railroad tracks (with Perfect Touch)
Fence and house (with Perfect Touch)
Loads of tiny details in branches and leaves and gravel in both of these shots, and Kodak's Perfect Touch manages to bring our the fall colors without completely crushing the fine print. We used the railroad tracks as our print sample, and the glossy, printed version looked good as a borderless 8.5 by 11 inch print. We could still see some of the digital sharpening, but from a step back it was a nice print.
Laptop fashion show
We tried taking shots at this Intel-sponsored fashion show with the xenon flash on and off. With the flash on, the camera usually focused on the folks directly in front of us, and the image was completely washed out. Without the flash, we got what you see here, which is a completely unusable, noisy image. At full zoom, the image looks like a watercolor filter has been applied in PhotoShop.
Wanna go out?
Wanna go out? (with Perfect Touch)
Here, Kodak's Perfect Touch couldn't quite save the day, as the photo still looked like an oil painting at full zoom. Also, the wood flooring looked better without Perfect Touch, and with the enhancement applied the dog's white fur took on a slightly bluish tint.
Park panorama
The Motorola Zine has a great panorama mode that lets you simply sweep the camera in front of you as it takes three successive shots. The camera uses a wireframe and vibrating feedback to guide you as you move the lens, then stitches the image itself. The fence here doesn't like up perfectly, but in the grass and trees the effect is much better. This is definitely one of the most effective, easiest panorama modes we've seen on a camera, and definitely the best on a camera phone.
Short ribs
Short ribs (with Perfect Touch)
Apologies to our vegan readers as we photograph dinner in the making. The flash helped here to cut through the steam and light the dark inside of the cast iron dutch oven. With Perfect Touch applied, though, the meat lost most of its juicy redness, and the camera seemed to focus instead on the rising vapor.
Skewed Pole panorama
One last nifty vertical panorama. The lightpost is curving due to the photo stitching, it isn't really shaped that way, but we were expecting some sort of distortion. Our only real problem is that the camera doesn't balance light and color throughout the shot.
Image transfer
Unfortunately, once you have all your shots taken, getting them off the phone and onto the Web, or in your recipients' inbox, is more difficult. We had no trouble just pulling the pics directly off the card, except for the fact that the card is buried under the battery, which was an annoying design decision. We tried the Kodak Gallery, but transfer to our Gallery page was sluggish and unreliable, even over Wi-Fi. Plus, once we uploaded our pics, we couldn't actually view them at their full, 5-megapixel resolution, which would have been ideal for sharing these pics as downloads. Kodak seems much more interested in selling prints and coffee mugs than actually letting people view pictures.
We also had trouble sending these pictures by any means. Whether we tried MMS for simpler messaging, sending pics through the Gmail account we set up on the phone, or even sending by Bluetooth directly to our laptop. Often there were long delays before the message would pop up for us to edit, but usually it never came up at all. Then, we got frequent errors trying to send, and none of our e-mails came through. This should have been a key feature for this phone, especially considering the Wi-Fi connectivity. We would have liked to see a whole new, intuitive interface built around sharing pics however we please, and not just with Kodak's upselling service.
Casio has been selling cameras under the Exilim brand for some time, so as the first cameraphone Casio has released on the U.S. market, we wanted to have high expectations. In many ways, the Casio Exilim C721 is unique as a cameraphone. Besides its durability, it's also the first cameraphone we've seen with an optical zoom, up to 3X. Unfortunately, Casio doesn't let you turn off digital zoom, so it was too easy to skip past the real optical zoom and into the fake digital, which is really just a zoomed and cropped image. In fact, as we said earlier, the controls on the Casio Exilim C721 gave us a lot of grief. This phone is not nearly as easy to use as a real point-and-shoot camera, and the interface was both confusing and sluggish.
Image quality on the Casio Exilim C721 could be excellent under the best conditions, but as light levels grew challenging or dim, the camera had trouble keeping images clean and clear. Outdoors, under good sunlight, we took some very nice pics that were clean, nicely detailed and accurately colored. The camera displayed a wide, dynamic range. With its zoom lens, the Casio Exilim C721 is capable of some nice perspective shots, and presents a pleasing level of bokeh, which is the stylistic blur in the background of an image. On the down side, we saw heavy barrel distortion, where an image seems to curve and bend around the middle. Noise was a serious problem under low light conditions, but other problems that usually pop up, like fringing and other aberrations, were mostly kept under control. The best images we took with the Casio Exilim C721 were worthy of being printed and hung, so for outdoor types looking for a rugged all-in-one unit, the Casio Exilim phone is a great choice, if not the only choice.
In low light situations, the camera fell flat. The dual-LED flash didn't help much, it gave our subjects a pallid, ghastly look. Spots of color noise and splotchy details dominated the scene as the sun went down, and the camera had a very hard time dealing with a strong light source, like a backlight sun or fluorescent lights in the supermarket.
In the end, the Casio Exilim C721 was not the best cameraphone we've seen, but considering its durability, we were very impressed with the best images we managed to squeeze out of the 5-megapixel camera. The C721 wasn't as good as the Motorola Zine ZN5, a Kodak-branded camera, and it couldn't hold a candle to the best smartphone cameras on the market, like the Nokia N85 and the HTC Touch Diamond 2. So, we're still waiting for a cameraphone from Casio that focuses on image quality, perhaps with some of the high-speed features we've enjoyed on their recent cameras (to check out recent high-speed Casio cameras, click here). Of course, compared to other rugged, waterproof phones, the Casio Exilim C721 is easily the best of the bunch, as the only rugged phone that truly takes imaging seriously. Check out our sample images below to see the best of what we shot in our test period.
Bunch of Wildflowers
Flower close up
Flower and Insects
Self portrait with flash
Self portrait outdoors
Water Tower
Water Tower at 3X zoom
Field and Clouds
Flowers and Wood
Stone Fruits
Vegetables
Sunset
Managing our photos was a different story, and the Casio Exilim C721 made it very difficult for us to actually see our pics on our laptop. There is no USB port on the phone, so to connect to a PC you must use the included cradle. The cradle plugs into the USB port on your PC, and the phone will also charge while it's docked. But the Casio Exilim C721 doesn't show up as a mass storage device. Instead, you have to load the included Windows software, a confusing, messy program that pulled pictures off the phone. We switch between our Windows and our Mac machines, but Mac users will be totally out of luck. The phone does not save images as straight .jpg files on the microSD card. Instead, files are hidden in a database, and the only way to retrieve them is through the Windows software. This is a horrible solution, and one of the worst ideas we've seen for file management on a camera (or a phone, for that matter). We want to be able to pop out the microSD and read images directly off the card.
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