Apple iPhone 3G Cell Phone Review - Imaging

The two megapixel camera fared about as well as the original iPhone's: slightly better than average. While you won't be blown away by the pictures, you will have a pretty good idea of what's going on in them.

Resolution (3.33)
We test resolution by using the phone to snap pictures of an industry standard resolution chart (an actual capture pictured below). We then run the resulting image files through Imatest, which analyzes the picture and counts the number of clearly defined lines. At a certain point, the lines get to be too thin or close together, and the camera simply depicts them as a blotch of gray. The number of clearly defined lines is measured in line widths per picture height, or lw/ph. We measure lw/ph both vertically and horizontally.

The iPhone 3G's camera was able to capture 866 lw/ph horizontally and 897 lw/ph vertically. This isn't great for 1600 x 1200 pixels -- in fact, the original iPhone performed better -- but it's certainly not a bad score for a cell phone camera. The iPhone 3G will have better resolution than the Instinct, captured 970 lw/ph horizontally and 879 lw/ph vertically. To put this in perspective with all image-capturing devices, first compare the iPhone 3G's lw/ph measurements to the N95's. The N95 totally blows it out of the water, but even so, those lw/ph measurements are only equivalent to a low-end point-and-shoot camera.

Cell Phone	Apple iPhone 3G	Samsung Instinct	LG Dare
Score	3.33	1.40	6.96
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	866/897	562/623	1251/709
Image of Resolution Chart

Cell Phone	Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	BlackBerry Curve 8320	Apple iPhone
Score	8.16	5.25	4.18
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1355/1388	1087/933	970/879
Image of Resolution Chart

Color (3.9)
To test color accuracy, we again point the phone's camera at an industry standard chart (a GretagMacbeth chart), this one all bedazzled with color swatches. Each of the 24 different colors are the more common ones to appear in photographs (blue skies, green plants, various skin tones, etc.). We take a series of pictures and run them through Imatest. Imatest, in turn, lets us know just how badly the phone did portraying the original colors.

The image above shows an actual image capture of the GretagMacbeth chart, as provided by the iPhone 3G. On top of this image are a series of overlays. The small, innermost rectangle represents the ideal color. The larger square represents the ideal color once it's been corrected for luminance. This larger square is what the capture should actually look like. As you can see, there seem to be some gross inaccuracies with the darker oranges and purples.

This second chart graphs the difference between the ideal colors and how they're actually portrayed on the phone. As you can see, the biggest failing point of the camera was with purples and reds. As you can see, yellows, reds and purples are all skewed up towards orange, with purple bearing the brunt of the misrepresentation. Even some browns and blues have more orange in them than they should. Other than this orange infusion, the iPhone 3G doesn't perform badly: most other colors are just slightly off their mark. A few greens might appear darker than they should, and a few blues are shifted slightly towards red. Again, however, the biggest issue is with the purples and reds.

Cell Phone	Apple iPhone 3G	Samsung Instinct	LG Dare
Score	3.90	1.67	3.77
Color Checker Chart

Cell Phone	Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	BlackBerry Curve 8320	Apple iPhone
Score	6.84	4.92	5.22
Color Checker Chart

Noise (1.16)
All cell phones currently suck when it comes to noise in photos. The iPhone 3G is no exception. It did manage to perform better than the average cell phone, but -- and we're noticing a trend here -- it performed slightly worse than the original iPhone.

Noise

Live Preview (9.0)
The live preview on the iPhone 3G is almost identical to the live preview on the previous iPhone. The screen is still 3.5 inches diagonally, and the resolution is still 480 x 320. The screen will also still smudge easily, so be ready to wipe it down before any viewfinding. Like before, the live preview takes up virtually all of the screen; at the bottom is a small gray border with a shutter buton and a shortcut to the photo album, or "camera roll."

We held the new iPhone side-by-side with the old one and panned them around. They behaved the same way to motion, lagging behind an insignificant amount, and blurring quite a bit. The blurring stabilized rather quickly on both. The only difference is, in this iPhone iteration, the screen is a brighter.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (5.97)
Starting in an unlocked standby, we were able to get off a shot in about 3.35 seconds. This is almost a full second slower than the original iPhone, but it is a bit faster than our current average time. There are no secret shortcuts to getting off a fast photo: you just hit the camera ap shortcut, then hit the shutter key. The picture automatically gets saved, allowing you to take a new photo right away. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (sec)

Shot to Shot Time (1.35)
The iPhone 3G doesn't have a burst mode, as before, so furiously mashing the shutter key is the fastest way to take a series of photos. For this test we take five pictures of our stopwatch, and use the times captured in the photographs as a record of how long the entire process took. If you'd like to learn more about this test, read this article.

On average, each shutter button sprint to five photos took 11.23 seconds. This equates to about 0.45 frames per second, which just narrowly beats the original iPhone's 0.40 fps. A good phone with a burst mode should net 1-2 frames per second. With such a slow shot to shot time, you'd better make sure you get your picture right the first time. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shot to Shot Time (sec)

Shutter to Shot Time (4.55)
Once we pressed the shutter key, it took the iPhone 3G an average of 0.44 seconds to actually capture an image. This is about average, maybe a few tenths of a second slower, and more or less equivalent to the original iPhone, which had an average shutter to shot time of 0.40 seconds. Compared to other, non-iPhone phones, the iPhone 3G performed well. If a phone has an autofocus lens, or is just slow, it will have a shutter to shot time of over a second: by that time, chances are your subject has blinked. For quick-draw phones with a fixed-focus lens, shutter to shot time can be a tenth of a second. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shutter to Shot Time (sec)

Interface (5.0)
The iPhone 3G's camera interface is unchanged from the previous iPhone. You get most of the screen as a viewfinder with two buttons at the bottom to take a photo and look at your albums. Simple is good, but we kind of feel that this might be too simple. The lack of any sort of upgrade to the iPhone's camera capabilities is one of our biggest dissapointments with the iPhone 3G.

Photo Album Software Internal (7.0)
The album software on the iPhone 3G is the same as the original iPhone and that's not a bad thing as it's definitely one of the most remarked upon pieces of software on the device. When you launch your software you see a list of all the albums you've synchronized to your iPhone with the photos taken by the camera in the Camera Roll album at the top. Tapping on an album will take you to a thumbnail view of the photos.

Tap on a photo to see it full sized, and rotate the phone to rotate the orientation of the photo. At the bottom of the screen are buttons to play a slideshow, go to the next photo and send it or assign it to a contact or wallpaper. You can also move between photos by simply swiping your finger across the screen in either direction and you can zoom in on the photo by pinching with your finger, probably the best example of the much touted multi-touch. Zooming back out can be done by spreading your fingers apart on the screen. Overall the album software on the iPhone 3G is very impressive, just like its predeccessor.

Manual Control (0.0)
The iPhone 3G's camera offers no manual controls.

Zoom (0.0)
The only zoom on the iPhone 3G happens when you walk closer to your subject.

Focus (0.0)
The iPhone 3G's camera is a fixed focus lens, which means what you see in the shot is what you get.

Flash (0.0)
There is no flash on the iPhone 3G.

Metering (0.0)
There are no metering controls on the iPhone 3G.

White Balance (0.0)
There are no white balance controls on the iPhone 3G (are you starting to notice a trend?).

Image Handling (0.0)
Although you can zoom in on and pan your photos when viewing them the iPhone 3G does not allow you to save these changes in the photo itself. In fact there are absolutely no image handling options available, not even renaming photos.

Video Quality (0.0)
The iPhone 3G does not support Video recording, a deficit that Apple has not addressed in the year since the first iPhone has been released. This will be a dissapointment to many, we're sure. More to the point it will result in the iPhone 3G receiving zeros in all of the following sections.

Video Resolution (0.0)
No video recording.

Video Compression (0.0)
No video recording.

Interface (0.0)
No video recording.

Manual Control (0.0)
No video recording.

Zoom (0.0)
No video recording.

Editing (0.0)
No video recording.

Modes (0.0)
No video recording.

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