Blackberry Storm Cell Phone Review - Imaging

Despite its 3.2-megapixel camera with auto-focus lens, the Storm had worse-than-expected resolution results for still images, though video resolution wasn't bad relatively. The interfaces for still image and video capture aren't entirely intuitive, but shouldn't get too much in the way of using them.

Resolution (2.65)
To evaluate a camera's resolution, we set the phone's camera to its highest quality and resolution settings and then take pictures of an industry-standard resolution chart with it. We then run the resulting images through the Imatest image analysis software. This software analyzes the pictures to measure the point at which black and white lines lose definition and begin to blur into each other, expressed in line widths per picture height (lw/ph) on the horizontal and vertical. As with most things we measure, higher numbers mean better resolution.

A picture of the resolution chart captured with the Storm

Despite its 3.2-megapixel camera and auto-focus lens, the Storm performs surprisingly poorly here, landing at the bottom of the pile among our comparison phones. Even the iPhone 3G with its 2.0-megapixel camera and fixed focus lens does better here.

Cell Phone	Blackberry Storm	T-Mobile G1	HTC Touch Diamond
Score	2.65	4.04	6.54
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1029 / 826	954 / 962	1213 / 1214
Image of Resolution Chart

Cell Phone	Nokia E71	Apple iPhone 3G	Blackberry Curve 8320
Score	6.46	3.33	5.25
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1206 / 1329	866 / 897	1087 / 933
Image of Resolution Chart

Color (3.30)
We use another industry-standard chart, the GretagMacbeth chart, to evaluate a camera's color accuracy. We take pictures of the chart with the phone's camera and run the resulting images through the Imatest software which then provides data on how closely the camera reproduced the chart's colors. The data comes in the form of 2 charts - the first is a view of the GretagMacbeth chart and gives a visual demonstration of what the camera captured. In this chart, the smallest rectangle shows the actual "correct" color, the largest rectangle shows what the camera captured, and the last interior rectangle shows what the camera should have captured with correction for lighting.

The Storm's color chart

Even with the naked eye, it's clear from this first chart that the Storm captures very muted colors - the smallest interior rectangles in this chart generated from pictures taken with the Storm are clearly more saturated and deeper to the naked eye than what the Storm captured, as represented by the largest rectangle of each color.

Imatest also generates a color error chart to display graphically how accurate the camera was in capturing color. In this chart, the squares indicate what the ideal color capture would be and the circles show how the camera captured that particular color. The line connecting each square and circle represents how accurately the camera captured the color - the longer the line, the less accurate the camera was. The chart also shows the level of saturation for each color captured by the camera - if the circles are closer to the center of the chart than the squares, the camera is capturing under-saturated color. If the squares are closer to the center of the chart than the circles, the camera is capturing over-saturated colors.

The Storm's color error chart

As you can see in the Storm's color error chart, the circles bunched toward the center of the chart with the squares further away from the center of the chart show it is indeed capturing very under-saturated color. The lengths of the lines between the circles and squares show that it has trouble capturing almost every color along the spectrum accurately, with the exception of blues for the most part.

Cell Phone	Blackberry Storm	T-Mobile G1	HTC Touch Diamond
Score	3.30	2.56	4.08
Color Checker Chart

Cell Phone	Nokia E71	Apple iPhone 3G	Blackberry Curve 8320
Score	4.55	3.90	4.92
Color Checker Chart

Noise (1.10)
The GretagMacbeth color chart is again the weapon of choice to evaluate the level of noise in a phone's camera. We use the phone's camera to take pictures of it at various lighting levels ranging from the equivalent of bright daylight down to candle light. Noise is more prevalent in low-light situations since any capturing errors in the image sensor can produce signals greater or less than what is actually present in the image being captured, resulting in graininess and inaccurate color. The resulting images from the various lighting levels are run through the Imatest software, which evaluates noise consistency through the different lighting levels.

Cell phone cameras are generally not meant to take the place of a dedicated digital camera, and we don't have very high expectations of them in general, particularly in low light situations. The Storm performs decently here relative to our comparison phones, with our results showing fairly consistent noise levels throughout the different lighting levels in which we test all the way down to the lowest level, where noise increases drastically. This is not atypical of cell phone cameras, and the Storm's performance here does not cause concern.

Live Preview (4.0)
The Storm's live preview takes up almost the entire screen with only a black bar across the bottom with symbols and icons to show status and settings. From left to right: the number of pictures that can be taken and saved to the selected memory location, the digital zoom level selected, auto-focus and shutter, and flash setting indicator. The last 2 items are not mentioned in the manual at all and provide no information when touched, and no changes to the camera's settings seem to activate them, so our best guess is that the first one is a brightness issue indicator (it lights up when the camera lens is covered) and the last one looks like cross-hairs and would seem to indicate focus level or geo-tagging, but does nothing when these options are activated.

The camera's live preview

The previewed image blurs quite a bit with fast movement, but it stabilizes quickly once the phone has stopped moving. Pictures aren't as previewed, showing significantly more than what was framed at the bottom of the image.

One exceptionally irritating thing about the live preview is that the screen will go dim after about 30 seconds, regardless of the global Screen/Keyboard settings defined to never let the screen go dim and to keep the backlight on for the maximum of 2 minutes. How on earth does this make sense? Be sure to pack your patience if you're taking pictures with the Storm and need the preview to be visible for more than 30 seconds at a time.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (5.48)
In this test, we time how quickly an image can be captured starting at the home screen in the unlocked state in order to replicate a user seeing something to take a picture of and taking out their cell phone to capture it. In this test, the Storm took an average of 4.16 seconds, a respectable score making it faster than the T-Mobile G1 and the HTC Touch Diamond, but still a bit slower than the Blackberry Curve 8320. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shot to Shot Time (0.39)
To see how quickly a phone's camera can capture multiple images, we time how long it takes 5 shots successively and calculate frames per second from this. We enable burst mode and turn off post-capture review for this test, neither of which are possible on the Storm. We found the Storm's camera to be periodically unresponsive, refusing to capture images even after the auto-focus box turned green to indicate readiness. In this test, the Storm took 0.13 frames per second, earning it the lowest score among all of our comparison phones. Don't count on taking multiple shots in quick succession on the Storm with any measure of consistency. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shutter to Shot Time (1.20)
To see how quickly the shutter activates and actually captures an image, we time how long it takes between the moment the shutter button is pressed until the image is recorded. We do this by starting a stopwatch when the shutter button is pressed and the resulting image shows how soon after this that the image was actually captured. Cameras with auto-focus lenses usually take a little longer to capture an image, and this is true of the Storm with its average time of 1.66 seconds between the press of the shutter button and the actual capture of a picture. This performance earns it a score on par with other comparison phones with auto-focus lenses, namely the T-Mobile G1 and the Nokia E71.
For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Interface (4.0)
The Storm's camera interface isn't the most intuitive - you must use both the touchscreen and the physical buttons to access options and it's not immediately clear which one is used when and why without referring to the manual. The shutter can be activated using the right convenience key or by pressing the on-screen camera button. The other "buttons" on both sides of the on-screen camera button do nothing when pressed, even though you'd think they would at least access some of the settings they represent, like the flash and brightness settings.

The camera's options menu

Getting to the settings requires pressing the Menu button and then selecting Options. Zooming in and out on a framed image can be done using the volume up and down rocker, though it's not marked to show this additional functionality, or by dragging your finger up and down on the screen. We like that the live preview takes up almost all of the large and vivid screen, but unintuitive controls that can't make up their mind between using the touchscreen or physical buttons ruin it a bit.

Photo Album Software Internal (5.0)
The Storm's photo album software presents thumbnails of all saved images in rows of 3 by and pictures are shown starting with the most recent additions by default. Both of these display settings can be changed in the Options menu. At the top of this main view is a search box and clicking it brings up the keyboard, and typing narrows down the results with each letter entered.

The main screen of the photo album software

At the bottom of the thumbnail view is a row of on-screen buttons. The first changes the thumbnail view to a list-plus-thumbnail view. The next button offers easy access to send the selected picture in an MMS message or in an email. The next button deletes the selected image and the last 2 buttons are page down and up controls.

The main thumbnail view

Clicking on a thumbnail shows a larger view of the selected image, though they're a bit slow to load. Rotating the phone between landscape and portrait orientation will change the view of the picture accordingly, though it's slow to change, taking several seconds to register the new position. Oddly enough, the zoom in/out screen gesture that works in camera mode does not work here - instead, you must double-click on the screen to zoom in and use the Escape button to zoom back out. Overall, there's nothing fancy here and it's fairly straightforward to use.

A view of a single photo

Manual Control (2.0)
It's not very common for a cell phone's camera to often manual control over image capture and the Storm is no exception here, offering only white balance presets for Sunny, Cloudy, Night, Incandescent, and Fluorescent lighting settings, in addition to an Automatic mode.

Zoom (1.0)
The Storm's camera has a digital zoom of up to 2x that is available with all picture size selections. Some phones are not capable of using their digital zoom function when the picture size is set to the highest resolution offered, and it's nice to see that this is not the case with the Storm.

Focus (5.0)
The Storm has an auto-focus lens, which is a nice feature on a cell phone camera. It's basic in nature, with no controls to turn it off or adjust it in any way.

Flash (6.0)
The Storm's camera has a flash, and it's pretty darned bright, illuminating dark areas pretty well for several feet. It illuminates the scene while the lens is focusing, and then turns off momentarily after the capture button is pressed, and then flashes on briefly when the shutter activates. Out of the box, it's set to Automatic mode so that it will turn on only when the lighting conditions merit. In the camera's settings, it can be turned off permanently or set to come on all the time as well.

The flash can also be used in video mode, and when turned on in the Options menu, it illuminates the entire scene while the video camera application is open. Of course, this can have a negative impact on the battery, as indicated in a brief warning that pops up when you turn it on.

Metering (0.0)
The Storm's camera has no metering controls to adjust how light is judged when framing an image.

White Balance (2.0)
The Storm's camera has an Automatic white balance mode, plus 5 other presets for different lighting conditions: Sunny, Cloudy, Night, Incandescent, and Fluorescent.

Image Handling (2.0)
Like many cell phones, the Storm offers limited image handling abilities. Photos can be deleted, copied, moved, or renamed. There is no way to crop, rotate, or otherwise modify pictures beyond this.

Video Quality (5.0)
The highest resolution at which video can be recorded on the Storm is 320 x 240 and it does a fairly good job. It's not a treat to view in full-screen on your computer, but it does a good job keeping up with fast movement, showing less pixelation than we've seen with other cell phone cameras. The Storm will be capable at catching impromptu moments on video as long as you don't expect to make DVDs from the resulting video as keepsakes of important life events.

Video Resolution (6.02)
Using a similar process to the one we use to test resolution in still images, we take a video of the industry-standard resolution chart with the phone's video recorder and run randomly-selected frames of the resulting video file through the Imatest software. Imatest analyzes the pictures to measure the point at which black and white lines lose definition and begin to blur into each other, expressed in line widths per picture height (lw/ph) on the horizontal and vertical. Again, higher numbers mean better resolution here.

Not all of our comparison phones can record video out of the box, so the Storm has a bit of a leg up here relative to the competition, though it's still not as good as the 2 devices that can do it, the HTC Touch Diamond and the Nokia E71.

Video Compression (2.0)
The Storm can record video in only one format, 3GP, earning it 2 points in this area.

Interface (4.0)
The Storm's video capture interface is pretty much the same as its camera interface. The live preview takes up most of the screen, but is cropped compared to what you see in the camera preview. In the bottom left, there's a graphic meter to show the approximate amount of space left to save recorded video on the selected storage media and an indicator for the video light (flash) setting. On the right is a timer showing the duration of the current video being captured. Video capture can only be started by pressing the on-screen record button - pressing the right convenience key on the side of the phone causes it to switch to still image capture, and it's not clear why this wouldn't work as you'd expect to start video recording.

The video camera's live preview

Zooming here doesn't work the same way as it does with still image capture since it can only be done with the volume up/down rocker and not by sliding a finger up and down on the screen. The video capture interface doesn't get in the way of taking video, but the inconsistencies in controls compared to still image capture makes things more confusing than they need to be.

Manual Control (0.0)
There are no manual controls for video capture on the Storm.

Zoom (1.0)
Digital zoom is available during video capture by pressing up and down on the volume up/down rocker. As mentioned in the Interface section above, it cannot be done by sliding a finger up and down on the screen as in the still image capture mode.

Editing (0.0)
Cell phones that can record video still rarely offer the ability to edit videos on the device directly, and the Storm does not deviate from this general rule. Videos can only be deleted or renamed on the Storm, and we do not award any points for these abilities.

Modes (4.0)
The Storm has effects that can be used to modify video recording:  Black & White and Sepia. These don't serve to actually enhance video recording capability, only adding some questionably artsy effects. There is an MMS video mode to record video at 176 x 144 resolution so that video files are smaller and more suitable for sending via MMS.

Previous    Next
Shop for a wireless plan Shop Carrier Type Minutes $/Min Cost Shop   Close Prepaid 0 0.1000 0.00