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HTC Mogul Cell Phone Review - Imaging

Alfredo Padilla Published on July 23, 2007 Comment on this

Intro Making/Receiving Calls Software Other Features

Tour & Design Messaging Battery Life Value & Comparisons

Audio Quality Organizer Connectivity Conclusion

Imaging Multimedia Hardware Ratings & Specs

Resolution (3.57)
To test resolution we take a series of photos of an industry standard resolution chart and run the results through the Imatest software. Imatest produces a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph), which is a measure of how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they begin to blur together.


The HTC Mogul didn't perform terribly in our resolution test, able to discern 895.9 lw/ph horizontal and 831.6 lw/ph vertical. This is significantly better than the T-Mobile Wing, another HTC phone with a 2 megapixel camera, which scored a terrible 533.3 lw/ph horizontal and 422 lw/ph vertical. Still, the Mogul lags behind some other 2 megapixel cameras, including the one found on the Apple iPhone that scored 970 lw/ph horizontal and 879 lw/ph vertical. The LG Prada's 2 megapixel camera also did a better job with a score of 1006 lw/ph horizontal and 1108 lw/ph vertical. The Mogul did beat out both the Nokia N75 and Helio Ocean however.

Cell Phone	HTC Mogul	T-Mobile Wing	BlackBerry 8800
Score	3.57	1.26	n/a – no camera
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	895.9/831.6/PH	533.3/422	n/a no-camera
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)			n/a - no camera

Cell Phone	Helio Ocean	Nokia N95	Apple iPhone
Score	2.18	6.81	4.18
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	701/476.6	1368/1223	970/879
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (1.82)
To test how well the camera on the Mogul captures colors we take a series of photos of the industry standard GretagMacbeth chart that displays 24 different colors. We run the resulting photos through Imatest, which compares the Mogul's captured colors to the original ones.


The chart above is produced by Imatest. It shows the original colors in the small rectangles, the Mogul's captured colors in the outer square and the corrected colors in the inner square. Imatest also produces the chart below where ideal colors are indicated by squares and the Mogul's captured colors are indicated by circles. The longer the line between the two the more inaccurate the camera's color capture.


As you can see from the charts above the Mogul's color capture leaves something to be desired. In fact, it's terrible. Almost every color is off, and not by a small amount. This likely indicates a serious problem with the Mogul's white balance capabilities, where it analyzes the image to judge the color (or temperature, as imaging geeks call it) of the light source. We take photos in automatic mode, and this result indicates that the Mogul did not do a good job of judging white balance. We also took photos using the Mogul's other white balance settings, and when we set it to the manual Incandescent light setting (the type of lights we use), the result was actually significantly better, albeit still terrible. Because we score phones on their performance under automatic conditions, the Mogul gets a low score, but you might be able to slightly improve your photos' color performance by experimenting with your white balance settings.

Cell Phone	HTC Mogul	T-Mobile Wing	BlackBerry 8800
Score	1.82	3.35	n/a – no camera
Color Checker Chart (click to view)			n/a - no camera

Cell Phone	Helio Ocean	Nokia N95	Apple iPhone
Score	6.66	6.95	5.22
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (1.45)
To test the noise produced by a phone's camera we take a series of photos of the GreagMacbeth color chart at various lighting levels ranging from 60 lux to 3000 lux. We then use Imatest to judge the noise produced at each lighting level. The Mogul performed well in this test, with fairly consistent results across lighting levels. We were happy to see that even at the lowest lighting level noise was no worse than under brighter conditions. Although the overall noise at all lighting levels was less than optimal, the consistency across lighting levels means that you can get decent results even in low light conditions.

Cell Phone	Score
HTC Mogul	1.45
T-Mobile Wing	1.1
BlackBerry 8800	n/a – no camera
Helio Ocean	1.14
Nokia N95	1.42
Apple iPhone	1.2

Live Preview (6.5)
The Mogul's live preview leaves something to be desires. Although we appreciate the fact that it uses the entire 2.8" screen for the preview we found the colors were washed out and overly brightened compared to what you are actually seeing. The produced photo's color is also off from what you were seeing on the screen, although less so. We were pleased that pixelation was not apparent and when you move the phone around distortions are less than you see on many phones. Still, the lack of color fidelity bothers us, although given the Mogul's poor color performance this may not be surprising.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (6.06)
Unlocked standby to first shot is a measure of how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until you have captured a photo. This is a good indication of how quickly you can pull the phone out and take a quick shot. The HTC Mogul was able to take a shot in 3.3 seconds. This is a good time, better than the Treo 750's 5.77 second time or the Helio Ocean's 4.1 second time. Because the Mogul uses a fixed focus lens and doesn't take the time to make sure the shot is in focus it's also faster than auto-focus cameras like the Nokia N95 (6.5s) and LG Prada (7.7s). The Mogul is also helped out by having a dedicated camera key, something the Treo 750 was lacking.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
HTC Mogul	3.3	6.06
T-Mobile Wing	2.97	6.73
BlackBerry 8800	n/a – no camera	n/a – no camera
Helio Ocean	4.1	4.88
Nokia N95	6.5	3.08
Apple iPhone	2.43	8.23

Shot to Shot Time (5.7)
Shot to shot time is a measure of how quickly a phone's camera can take a series of shots. When possible we use burst mode, but not all models support this. Luckily the Mogul does have a burst mode, although you should note that this takes photos at a much lower 640 x 480 resolution. If you want to take a series of photos at the full 1600 x 1200 resolution you will need to do so manually. Using burst mode we took a series of six shots in 3.1 seconds. This works out to 1.9 frames per second (fps), a good score. This is better than the Helio Ocean's 1.25 fps and most phones usually score below 1 fps. One nice feature is that you can take up to 30 shots in a row using the Mogul's burst mode, it keeps taking photos as long as you hold down the shutter button. Most cell phone cameras stop shooting after just a handful.

Cell Phone	FPS	Score
HTC Mogul	1.9	5.7
T-Mobile Wing	2.3	6.9
BlackBerry 8800	n/a – no camera	n/a – no camera
Helio Ocean	1.25	3.75
Nokia N95	0.42	1.26
Apple iPhone	0.4	1.2

Shutter to Shot Time (9.52)
Shutter to shot time is a measure of how long it takes the camera to actually capture a photo once you have pressed the shutter button. Most cameras require at least a little bit of time to process the image, with auto-focus cameras adding additional time to make sure the scene is in focus. The Mogul uses a fixed focus camera however, which means we would expect it to perform fairly well and it didn't disappoint with a time of .21 seconds. This is better than the Helio Ocean's .6 seconds and the Apple iPhone's .4 seconds. It's also better than the T-Mobile Wing's time of .43 seconds. We were quite pleased with the Mogul's shutter to shot time, although it should be noted that "real" cameras with fixed focus lenses generally display no lag time between shutter and shot.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
HTC Mogul	0.21	9.52
T-Mobile Wing	0.43	4.65
BlackBerry 8800	n/a – no camera	n/a – no camera
Helio Ocean	0.6	3.33
Nokia N95	1	1.96
Apple iPhone	0.4	5

Interface (6.0)
The Mogul's camera interface is the now familiar interface found on modern HTC phones. The entire screen is used as a viewfinder with controls and indicators overlayed in white. Along the left is a zoom control and below that buttons that allow you to access the settings or album software. Along the bottom are brightness, metering, flash, white balance and timer controls. Along the top are an indicator for your camera mode, photo size, where your photos are being saved and a counter showing how many photos you can take. Unfortunately the directional pad support is rather limited. left/right switches camera modes while up/down controls the digital zoom. When you enter the settings you are shown a line of settings along the bottom with the actual items that can be changed above. Even in this mode you can still see what the viewfinder is showing and you can easily navigate the settings using the directional pad. Overall we found the interface a little busy but easy to use and with a plethora of settings in easy access. Still, we would have preferred better D-Pad support as found on Nokia N-Series devices.

Photo Album Software Internal (7.0)
The photo album software on the Mogul is the standard Pictures & Videos program found on all Windows Mobile devices. This presents items in thumbnail view in a 3 x 4 grid. You can navigate between the thumbnails using the directional pad. Thumbnails were drawn fairly quickly, although if you have many photos you may encounter some lag when starting the program. From here you can send pictures via MMS, Email, Bluetooth or IRDA. You can also play a slide show, although there are no settings for controlling how the slide show is handled. You can also save photos to a contact, set a photo as your background picture or view the photos properties. We were very happy with the range of functionality and ease of use of the Mogul's album software.

Manual Control (2.0)
The Mogul does not provide users with many manual controls. There are a couple of scene modes, for example daylight, night and sport mode. More advanced manual controls like manual white balance, aperture priority mode and shutter priority mode are all missing. We were particularly unhappy about the lack of manual white balance as this can be found on some entry level handsets, much less an advanced phone like the Mogul.

Zoom (0.0)
The Mogul has a 2x digital zoom, however this zoom is only available at lower resolution settings. When you are taking full size 1600 x 1200 shots there is no zoom. Digital zoom is of limited utility at the best of times, but when you're talking about cropping and resizing smaller photos it's almost completely useless. We do not award points for phones that don't offer their digital zoom at maximum resolution, thus the Mogul receives a zero in this section.

Focus (0.0)
The HTC Mogul has a fixed focus lens. This means that what you see is what you get. This is in contrast to phones like the LG Prada and Nokia N95 that have auto-focus lenses. For a high end device like the Mogul we were disappointed to see a fixed focus lens. We hope that HTC begins including auto-focus lenses on their high end devices soon.

Flash (3.0)
The HTC Mogul includes a simple LED flash that's always on when you activate it. The flash is only affective out to a range of a couple of feet.

Metering (6.0)
We were pleased to see that like the T-Mobile Wing the Mogul includes metering controls. It seems like HTC is going to begin including this in all of its newer handsets. The controls are limited, allowing you to choose between average metering and center-weighted metering, however even advanced camera phones like the Nokia N95 lack these options. Metering controls allow you to judge from what point or points light in the scene is judged. It has been standard on regular cameras for awhile now but we are just now starting to see these controls on camera phones. In addition to these controls the Mogul also allows you to manually control brightness in the scene.

White Balance (2.0)
The HTC Mogul provides four different white balance settings in addition to auto, these include daylight, night, incandescent and flourescent. As we discussed in the color section the Mogul does a terrible job of judging white balance in automatic mode, so we recommend that you choose the white balance settings that's most appropriate for your scene.

Image Handling (6.0)
As with other Windows Mobile devices the Pictures & Video program on the Mogul provides better than average image handling options. You can rename, crop and rotate photos. There's also an auto-correct feature that will try to automatically adjust your photo similar to the "I'm feeling lucky" option on Picassa or the "Enhance" option in iPhoto. This is an excellent feature that gives you an opportunity to fix photos that might have some small problems right on your device. This feature is rarely found on phones. We were very happy with the image handling options on the Mogul. Of phones we've reviewed only Nokia N-Series devices like the N95 offer better image handling options.

Video

Overall Video Score (3.0)
The HTC Mogul takes video at two resolution levels: 128 x 96 and 176 x 144. Both of these resolution levels produce poor quality videos with a high degree of pixelation and a general fuzziness that is probably the result of high compression. Color fidelity is as good as you can expect from such low resolution video, but the Mogul's videos aren't a patch on the 352 x 288 videos taken by the Treo 750, much less the 640 x 480 resolution videos captured by the Nokia N95. We were not impressed by the Mogul's video capture and wonder why HTC decided to go with such low video capture modes given that previous handsets like the AT&T 8525 includes 352 x 288 video capture.

Video Resolution (3.04)
As we mentioned above the Mogul captures video at a maximum resolution of 176 x 144. This is sufficient for sending MMS video, but not much else. To test the quality of the resolution captured by the Mogul we run stills from a video capture of an industry standard resolution chart through Imatest. Just like still resolution this produces a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph). The Mogul performed reasonably well in this test for it's low resolution, able to discern 220.9 lw/ph horizontal and 137.8 lw/ph vertical. This is significantly better than the T-Mobile Wing's atrocious 82.39 lw/ph horizontal and 141.3 lw/ph vertical, and better than the Treo 750's score of 132.4 lw/ph horizontal and 184.6 lw/ph vertical. It should be noted that our resolution score is independent of the capture resolution, which explains how there can be such a wide range between phones that capture at different resolution levels. Still, better is not good and when you consider that the Nokia N95 scored 336.5 lw/ph horizontal and 428.1 lw/ph vertical you can see how poorly the Mogul performed.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
HTC Mogul	220.9/137.8	3.04
T-Mobile Wing	82.39/141.3	1.16
BlackBerry 8800	n/a – no camera	n/a – no camera
Helio Ocean	283/160.1	4.53
Nokia N95	336.5/428.1	14.41
Apple iPhone	n/a – no video recording	n/a – no video recording

Video Compression (6.0)
We were pleased to see that the HTC Mogul provides users with a range of video compression options. In addition to the default Mpeg4 format you can also capture videos in H.263, 3GP and Motion Jpeg. We appreciate having this range of options on phones, too bad the quality of video on the Mogul isn't good enough that it makes too much a difference what compression mode you are using.

Interface (6.0)
The video capture interface on the Mogul is basically identical to the stills capture, only with different settings available. In place of the photo counter in the upper right is a timer that shows you how much video you can capture when in standby and the length of the current video when capturing. The bottom of the screen provides brightness, metering, flash and white balance settings along with buttons for accessing the settings dialogue and your album software. As with the stills capture interface we found the video capture interface to be a little busy but generally easy to use and with quick access to many settings.

Manual Control (0.0)
The HTC Mogul's video capture mode offers no manual controls. This includes things like manual white balance, shutter settings and manual gain.

Zoom (1.0)
Unlike the digital zoom on the stills camera the Mogul does offer 2x digital zoom at the maximum resolution in video capture mode. Of course given the very small resolution provided by the video camera this is almost completely useless, but its there.

Editing (0.0)
Unlike the excellent photo editing options available on the Mogul there are no video editing options on the Mogul. If for some reason you want to edit the low resolution videos captured by the Mogul you'll have to get some third party software to do it.

Modes (4.0)
As with still photos you can choose from two metering modes when capturing video on the Mogul, center weighted and averaged. Although there is no specific setting for MMS video, either of the resolution levels on the Mogul will be compatible with MMS messages as long as you limit the length of the video. There are no options for scene modes on the Mogul.

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