BlackBerry Curve review - Imaging
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Mark Brezinski Published on August 10, 2007 Comment on this |
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Resolution (2.97)
We measure the resolution of cell phone cameras by taking a picture of an industry standard resolution chart in precisely controlled lighting conditions. We then run this image through the professional image analysis program Imatest, which examines the image and calculates the resolution the camera can capture in a measure called line width per picture height (lw/ph); an indication of how many alternating black and white horizontal and vertical lines the camera can capture before the lines blur together.
The 2-megapixel camera on the Curve had a pretty average score in this test; the lw/ph measure was 816 horizontal and 398 vertical. That's in line with what we have seen from other cameras that shoot at similar resolutions; the Helio Ocean managed 701 horizontal and 476.6 vertical. So, in resolution terms, the camera on the Curve is decent, but not outstanding.
| Cell Phone | BlackBerry Curve | BlackBerry 8800 | HTC Mogul |
| Score | 2.97 | N/A: no camera | 3.57 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 701/476.6 | N/A: no camera | 533.3/422 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) | |
N/A: no camera |
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| Cell Phone | Motorola Q | Palm Treo 700p | Helio Ocean |
| Score | 1.35 | 2.87 | 2.18 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 569/515 | 830.2/789.3 | 701/476.6 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
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Color (4.96)
In this test, we look at the accuracy of the colors captured by the Curve. We test this by photographing an industry standard color chart under controlled lighting conditions, and running the resulting images through Imatest, which measures the captured colors against the real thing, producing this chart.
On this chart, the real chart colors are in the small vertical rectangle, the adjusted colors (where Imatest does its best to color correct the captured colors) are in the middle rectangle, and the captured colors fill the outer square.
Imatest also produces this chart, which represents where the colors fall on a color gamut chart. The circles represent the colors captured by the Curve, while the squares represent the actual colors. The longer the line between the two, the more inaccurate the colors.
The Curve did a reasonable job with colors; most of the colors were not overly inaccurate. Some colors were way off, though; yellows and some of the reds were way off the mark. Still, the Curve did a reasonable job with color; although the color is not as accurate as you would get from even a cheap digital camera, it's good enough for casual snapshots.
| Cell Phone | BlackBerry Curve | BlackBerry 8800 | HTC Mogul |
| Score | 4.96 | N/A: no camera | 1.82 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
N/A: no camera |
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| Cell Phone | Motorola Q | Palm Treo 700p | Helio Ocean |
| Score | 3.13 | 7.59 | 6.66 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
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Noise (1.18)
The Curve also did reasonably well in our noise tests. We measure the noise in images by taking photos at a number of different light levels, then using Imatest to determine the amount of noise in each image. The Curve was pretty good; although the images captured at the lower light levels had definite noise in them, the level of noise was comparable with other similar resolution camera phones, such as the Helio Ocean and the LG Prada. The only cell phone we have tested with significantly less noise is the Nokia N95, which includes a 5 megapixel camera. But the N95 is also much more expensive, with a retail price of more than $700. If you take images in low light situations, the photos captured by the Curve will show noise, but not significantly more or less than other phones.
| Cell Phone | Score |
| BlackBerry Curve | 1.18 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | N/A: no camera |
| HTC Mogul | 1.82 |
| Motorola Q | 4.27 |
| Palm Treo 700p | 1.05 |
| Helio Ocean | 1.14 |
Live Preview (5.0)
By default, the Curve uses about two thirds of the screen to show the live preview of the image to be captured; along the bottom of the screen are icons that show the number of images that can be stored, a warning if there isn't enough light, the current zoom setting, and the flash status. The left and right of the screen are taken up by black bars.
There is a trio of buttons serving as shutter keys: Enter, the right convenience key (default), and the trackball. Digital zoom is governed by scrolling the trackball or the volume rocker. The SYM key toggles the view to fullscreen and SPACE cycles through flash options.
The preview itself is fairly good. It's not as sharp as the final picture, but it's not pixellated either. It is fairly responsive to motion, but tends to be jerky or sluggish when you move the camera in low light.
Unlocked Standby to First Shot (4.26)
We measured the time it takes to go from the home screen to taking a photo at 4.7 seconds; rather on the slow side. Our test was carried out by scrolling though the home screen menu to the camera application. Although you can also get to this application by pressing and holding the camera button on the side of the device, this wasn't any quicker; you have to hold it down for a second or two, and the application takes a couple of seconds to start up before you can take the shot. Either way, the Curve is not a device that will allow you to immediately capture candid shots.
| Cell Phone | 4.7 | 4.26 |
| BlackBerry Curve | 4.7 | 4.26 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | N/A: no camera | 0 |
| HTC Mogul | 3.3 | 6.06 |
| Motorola Q | 4.1 | 4.88 |
| Palm Treo 700p | 3.96 | 5.05 |
| Helio Ocean | 4.1 | 4.88 |
Shot to Shot Time (0.90)
The curve has no Burst mode; if you want to take a series of pictures, you have to take one, then quit out of the viewer application, then take another, etc. This makes the shot to shot time very slow; it took us nine seconds to take a series of three images, a frame rate of 0.3 frames per second (fps). That's a lot slower than most cell phones, many of which offer a Burst mode (albeit sometimes at the cost of reduced resolution).
| Cell Phone | 0.30 | 0.90 |
| BlackBerry Curve | 0.30 | 0.90 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | N/A: no camera | 0 |
| HTC Mogul | 1.90 | 5.70 |
| Motorola Q | 0.30 | 0.90 |
| Palm Treo 700p | 0.20 | 0.60 |
| Helio Ocean | 1.25 | 3.75 |
Shutter to Shot Time (5.88)
For this test, we take a picture of a stopwatch, which we start at the same time we press the shutter key. The time showed in the resulting capture shows the delay before the camera actually takes the picture. We take five shots, and average the times together. The Curve took an average of .34 seconds to take a picture after the shutter key had been pushed.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| BlackBerry Curve | 0.34 | 5.88 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | N/A: no camera | 0 |
| HTC Mogul | 0.21 | 9.52 |
| Motorola Q | 0.50 | 4.00 |
| Palm Treo 700p | 6.67 | 0.30 |
| Helio Ocean | 0.60 | 3.33 |
Interface (5.0)
The interface for capturing stills is pretty straightforward. The pertinent information is displayed along the bottom, and is well-sized and easy to read. There's three different buttons to work the shutter, and a few menu commands have shortcut buttons (flash has shift, and Full Screen mode has SYM).
Pressing the menu key allows users to enable Full Screen Viewfinder mode, go to the photo album, or fiddle with camera options. The Camera Options menu allows you to toggle the flash setting, picture size, picture quality, and color effect. There is a white balance option, in which you can choose from one of six preset modes or automatic white balance. You can also change the live preview to full screen. The last two options deal with storage, allowing you to save pictures to the device or an external memory source, or change the folder the pictures are saved to.
Once you've actually taken a picture, a set of five buttons pop up on the left hand side, while the bottom bar displays the picture's file name. These buttons allow you to take another picture, delete the picture you just took, send the picture via e-mail or MMS, set it as wallpaper or a picture ID, or rename the picture.
This is where users will find the one confusing aspect of the interface. The "Set as" button offers fairly standard functionality, but you wouldn't guess it by looking at the symbol on its button. Anyone even remotely familiar with picture editing would think it is a cropping tool. We saw those familiar, overlapping right angles, and were excited to see picture editing tools so readily available. In fact, we thought we misclicked the first few times the "Set as" menu popped up. Even more confusing is exactly why the folks at BlackBerry chose to represent this menu in such a way; it's not as though the crop symbol is an uncommon one.
Photo Album Software Internal (5.0)
The Curve offers some good functionality in its photo album. The main album window displays thumbnails which you can highlight and open using the control ball. In the menu, you can choose the number of thumbnails displayd per row (2-5). You can also alter how you sort items, either by name or date taken. The Curve sports a rudimentary slideshow viewer, which cycles through a folder's pictures. The delay between slides can be set to a seconds interval from 1-15. Other menu options allow you to manage your photos, such as copying, moving, deleting, sending them in an e-mail/MMS/Bluetooth, or set a picture as a caller ID.
Viewing a photo utilizes the full screen. From here, you can zoom in on parts of the picture and rotate it. Rotation is limited to clockwise, 90-degree increments. Any zooming or rotation is merely for viewing purposes, though you can set a zoomed/rotated picture to your wallpaper. Setting a photo to wallpaper is another challenge entirely, however, as the home screen's wallpaper allotment is just a sliver of the actual home screen. Furthermore, what you see in the picture viewer is exactly how your picture is oriented on the homescreen, meaning you'll need to orient the picture's focal point toward the bottom half; otherwise your wallpaper will just show the bottom half of what you want it to.
We were pleased to see that, while viewing a zoomed/rotated picture, it reappears upon reentering the album, even if the album is exited unexpectedly.
Manual Control (2.0)
As mentioned above, the Curve allows you to manually control some settings. There is no control over shutter speed or apeture, but you can turn the flash on, off, or set it to automatic. White balance has six preset modes as well as an automatic setting. You set the picture size to one of three presets; 1600 x 1200, 1024 x 768, or 640 x 480. Picture quality can be set to normal, fine, or superfine. There are also two color effects: black & white and sepia.
Zoom (1.0)
The Curve has a digital zoom capable of 3x and 5x. We only give one point for digital zoom since zooming is essentially just cropping a portion of the photo and stretching the resulting image. Therefore, a digital zoom results in a lower-resolution image than what you started with. We award additional points for optical zoom, which actually zooms as opposed to cropping and enlarging, but this functionality is very rare.
Focus (0.0)
The Curve has a fixed focus lens, which we do not award points for. Auto focus lenses are still uncommon additions to phones, though they are becoming increasingly popular. Such a lens is certainly not a priority for a business device, however.
Flash (6.0)
Unlike most phones, the Curve actually has a flash. For most phones, activating the flash turns on the flash LED, which simply stays on. The Curve's flash functions correctly, and actually flashes as opposed to blinding your subject while you line up a shot. Like most LED flashes, though, it's only good within a few feet. Four feet and further away will result in a dark picture. While you will still be able to make out images at four feet, the LED flash is nothing compared to an actual digital camera's flash. As it stands, however, the Curve's flash functionality is much better than a lot of other phones.
Metering (0.0)
The BlackBerry doesn't support metering.
White Balance (4.0)
As mentioned previously, the Curve supports some manual white balance options. You can choose from a few presets, including Sunny, Cloudy, Night, Indoor, Incandescent, and Fluorescent. You can also opt for Automatic white balancing. There isn't a white balance slider, however. This is an odd feature to leave out, as it's even included on most normal phones.
Image Handling (2.0)
The only image handling options on the Curve are the abilities to rename and resave images. You can zoom and rotate images while viewing them, but these changes cannot be saved. You can, however, set zoomed/rotated images as your wallpaper (though this has its own special set of difficulties).
Video
Overall Video Score (0.0)
Unfortunately, the Curve is not capable of capturing videos.
Video Resolution (0.0)
The Curve is unable to capture video.
| Cell Phone | lw/ph horizontal/vertical | Score |
| BlackBerry Curve | N/A: unable to capture video | 0 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | N/A: no camera | 0 |
| HTC Mogul | 220.9/137.8 | 3.04 |
| Motorola Q | 65.71/144.6 | 0.98 |
| Palm Treo 700p | 181.5/190.9 | 3.46 |
| Helio Ocean | 283/160.1 | 4.53 |
Video Compression (0.0)
The Curve is unable to capture video.
Interface (0.0)
The Curve is unable to capture video.
Manual Control (0.0)
The Curve is unable to capture video.
Zoom (0.0)
The Curve is unable to capture video.
Editing (0.0)
The Curve is unable to capture video.
Modes (0.0)
The Curve is unable to capture video.
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