Windows Phone Thoughts: Seize the Day With the Samsung Intrepid from Sprint

Be sure to register in our forums! Share your opinions, help others, and enter our contests.


Digital Home Thoughts

Loading feed...

Laptop Thoughts

Loading feed...

Android Thoughts

Loading feed...



Friday, February 12, 2010

Seize the Day With the Samsung Intrepid from Sprint

Posted by Doug Raeburn in "Samsung Windows Phones" @ 07:30 AM

Camera Performance

If you've read previous reviews of mine, you know that I'm not a huge fan of cameras built into cell phones. However, I do recognize their place in the world. I really don't want to get into another tiresome debate on this topic, so let me just sum it up like this... for everyday casual photographs under good lighting conditions, most cell phone cameras will do a satisfactory job. If you're planning for an occasion where you'd expect to get important keepsake photos (a wedding, graduation, sightseeing vacation, etc.), I would recommend that you plan ahead and use a dedicated digital camera with features such as an optical zoom lens, "real" flash, image stabilization, extensive built-in exposure algorithms, etc., features not currently available on even the most advanced cell phone camera. I'm confident in saying that such a camera should give you better results under comparable circumstances.

So, if "the best camera is the one you have with you" and that camera is the Samsung Intrepid, how would you do? Well, it's a mixed bag. The Intrepid has many of the features found in the most advanced cell phone cameras, with the most important feature being an auto focus lens. Not only is the auto focus lens likely to give you sharper photographs, but better exposures as well, since the "tricks" used by fixed focus cameras to ensure sharp photos are at the expense of exposure flexibility. Other features include:

  • Various shooting modes, such as Single, Continuous and Smile (the shutter fires when it detects a smiling face);
  • Scene settings such as Sports, Party and Sunset;
  • Self timer settings;
  • Exposure compensation;
  • White Balance.

One feature missing on the Intrepid is an LED flash, a feature available on some other phones.

Figure 20: Automatic white balance struggled with tungsten lighting.

I took a standard shot of a floral centerpiece with the Intrepid, leaving all of the settings on automatic. As you can see, the automatic white balance setting did only a fair job of compensating for the reddish cast of the tungsten lighting.

Figure 21: Dark and reddish image on a cloudy day.

An outdoor photo on a gloomy, cloudy day ended up reddish, which again indicates that the automatic white balance did only a fair job. I could have tried changing some of the automatic settings, but my sense is that the average user of such a camera would pretty much limit him or herself to the automatic settings. So under those conditions, what I got is probably what you'd get. To be fair, though, professional tests of even higher end digital cameras often result in a criticism of the performance of the automatic white balance.

Figure 22: A good picture on a rare sunny day.

An outdoor photo on a sunny day turned out better. The automatic white balance seemed to be much more effective under these conditions. Which are the optimal conditions for this type of camera.

These photos would probably pass muster with the average person, but the biggest drawback of this particular camera was the speed of the auto focusing. Depending on lighting conditions, it took from two to four seconds from the time that I pressed the shutter button for the picture to be taken. From a photography standpoint, that's a near eternity and can result in photo opportunities being missed. By comparison, my Canon SD970 took comparable photos in under one second. While other autofocus cell phone cameras were slower than the Canon, they were generally much faster than the Intrepid. In my eyes, this makes the Intrepid a less than ideal choice for a general purpose camera.


Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...

Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...

Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...

Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...

Reviews & Articles

Loading feed...

News

Loading feed...