HTC Touch Cell Phone Review - Imaging
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Alfredo Padilla Published on November 07, 2007 Comment on this |
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Resolution (3.56)
To test the resolution of the HTC Touch's camera we took a series of photos of an industry standard resolution chart under precisely controlled lighting conditions. We ran these photos through the Imatest software, which produces a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph), a measure of how many alternating black and white lines the camera can capture and reproduce before they begin blurring together.
| Cell Phone | HTC Touch | Helio Ocean | BlackBerry Curve 8320 |
| Score | 3.56 | 2.18 | 5.25 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 895 / 1082 | 701 / 476.6 | 1087 / 933 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
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| Cell Phone | HTC Mogul | Palm Centro | Apple iPhone |
| Score | 3.57 | 1.41 | 4.18 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 913.9 / 864.1 | 581 / 596 | 970 / 879 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
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Color (2.23)
To test the quality of color captured by the Touch's camera we took photos of an industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart. This chart displays 24 different colors, and the captured photos are compared to the original colors by the Imatest software.
| Cell Phone | HTC Touch | Helio Ocean | BlackBerry Curve 8320 |
| Score | 2.23 | 6.66 | 4.92 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
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| Cell Phone | HTC Mogul | Palm Centro | Apple iPhone |
| Score | 1.82 | 8.08 | 5.22 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
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Noise (1.14)
To see how much noise is produced by the Touch's camera we took photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at four different lighting levels. We then used Imatest to calculate how much noise is produced at each level. For our final score we looked at overall noise at each lighting level and consistency across lighting levels. The HTC Touch produced fairly low noise at the three highest lighting levels, but this shot up quite a bit in low light situations. Overall, its score is fairly middling, as you can see below. You'll also note that none of our phones put up a particularly good score; cell phone cameras produce noisier images than dedicated digital cameras.
| Cell Phone | Score |
| HTC Touch | 1.14 |
| Helio Ocean | 1.14 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 1.41 |
| HTC Mogul | 1.45 |
| Palm Centro | 0.91 |
| Apple iPhone | 1.20 |
Live Preview (7.0)
The HTC Touch's live preview does a fairly good job. The entire screen is used, giving you a nice big viewfinder, and we saw very little pixellation or noise in the preview. Colors seemed accurate and refresh rate was good, allowing you to pan without causing your preview to go fuzzy. The live preview was also an accurate predictor of the final photo captured. Overall, we were quite happy with the Touch's live preview.
Unlocked Standby to First Shot (7.41)
This test measures how long it will take you to whip out your phone and take a quick photo. We time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have a captured photo. We repeat this test until we get a consistent result. The HTC Touch took 2.7 seconds to capture a photo when starting from the home screen, which is decent. Of course, 2.7 seconds is still a long time, and any cell phone camera is generally slower than a dedicated point and shoot camera.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| HTC Touch | 2.7 | 7.41 |
| Helio Ocean | 4.1 | 4.88 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 2.9 | 6.90 |
| HTC Mogul | 3.3 | 6.06 |
| Palm Centro | 3.8 | 5.26 |
| Apple iPhone | 2.43 | 8.23 |
Shot to Shot Time (5.0)
Shot to shot time is a measure of how quickly you can capture a series of photos. When possible we try to use a camera's Burst mode, which the HTC Touch does have, although we should note that photos captured with Burst mode are at a much lower resolution (640 x 480) than photos captured normally. With the Touch's Burst mode we were able to capture five photos in three seconds, which works out to 1.67 frames per second (fps). This is pretty good, scoring better than most of our comparison phones. The Burst mode, and a similar Sport mode, allow you to take quick series of photos so you can capture action shots better, albeit at a much lower resolution.
| Cell Phone | FPS | Score |
| HTC Touch | 1.67 | 5.00 |
| Helio Ocean | 1.25 | 3.75 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 0.35 | 1.05 |
| HTC Mogul | 1.90 | 5.70 |
| Palm Centro | 0.28 | 0.84 |
| Apple iPhone | 0.40 | 1.20 |
Shutter to Shot Time (7.69)
Shutter to shot time is a measure of how long it takes the camera to actually capture a photo once you've pressed the shutter button. We do this test repeatedly until we get a consistent result. The HTC Touch took 0.26 seconds from shutter to shot. This is a pretty good time; only the HTC Mogul did better on this test. The Touch is helped by the fact that it has a fixed focus camera, so you don't have to wait for the lens to focus.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| HTC Touch | 0.26 | 7.69 |
| Helio Ocean | 0.60 | 3.33 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 0.43 | 4.65 |
| HTC Mogul | 0.21 | 9.52 |
| Palm Centro | 0.88 | 2.27 |
| Apple iPhone | 0.40 | 5.00 |
Interface (7.5)
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The interface of the HTC Touch is somewhat similar to what we've seen from other HTC Windows Mobile Professional devices, but with a few tweaks. The entire screen is used as a viewfinder. Tapping on the screen brings up an unobtrusive overlay that shows you how many photos you can still take, the current zoom level, and Camera mode. At the bottom is an arrow that brings up a half-screen menu to adjust common items like white balance, while at the bottom left is a button that brings up more advanced settings. Overall, we found the interface to be clean and easy to use. We've been fans of HTC's camera interface in the past, and we only think they've improved with the Touch.
Photo Album Software Internal (8.0)
The Touch is different from most Windows Mobile Professional devices in that it has two separate photo album programs. The first is the standard Windows Mobile album software, which is fairly decent. It lays out photos in a thumbnail grid, allows you to create simple slide shows, and has good editing functions. HTC has added a new piece of album software as part of its TouchFLO interface, however, and although it may not be more advanced than the standard album software, it certainly makes up for it by being pretty.
Manual Control (0.0)
The HTC Touch lacks any manual controls.
Zoom (0.0)
The HTC Touch has a 2x digital zoom, however this zoom isn't available at the highest resolution setting. Given that all digital zoom does is crop and enlarge what you're seeing, you'd want to use it on the largest setting, and the fact you can't removes 99 percent of its utility. As such we are not awarding any points for it.
Focus (0.0)
The HTC Touch's camera uses a fixed focus lens, which means what you see is what you get. We're starting to see some higher-end phones, like the HTC Tilt, come out with autofocus lenses that produce better photos. We don't award points for fixed focus lenses.
Flash (0.0)
The HTC Touch does not have a flash.
Metering (6.0)
HTC has become one of the first phone manufacturers to put metering controls on its phone cameras, and they are available on the Touch. Metering allows you to control from which point or points light in the scene is judged. The Touch offers you a choice between center area and averaged metering, which is rare on cell phone cameras. Brightness controls, which are more common, are also available on the Touch.
White Balance (2.0)
The Touch offers presets for white balance, including Incandescent and Tungsten. There is no support for more advanced white balance options like Evaluative white balance mode.
Image Handling (6.0)
As we discussed in the album section, there are two programs on the Touch that allow you to do some image manipulation. HTC's new album software only provides very basic image handling options, including the ability to rotate photos. In contrast, the standard Windows Mobile Professional album software allows you to do some more advanced editing, like crop a photo and auto correct color. These features are good for a cell phone, although not as good as the plethora of advanced editing functions we see on Symbian Series 60 devices like the Nokia N95.
Video
Overall Video Score (2.0)
The videos captured by the HTC Touch are really only good for sending via MMS. At only 176 x 144 resolution, they look terrible at even their standard size on a computer monitor, so forget about putting them into full screen or watching them on a television. If you're looking for a phone with good video capture, this isn't it.
Video Resolution (4.51)
To test the resolution of videos produced by the HTC Touch we took video of the same industry standard resolution chart we use for stills testing. We then ran frames from that video through Imatest, which again produced a line widths per pixel height (lw/ph) score. This score is a measure of how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together. The HTC Touch's video scored about average in this test at 204 lw/ph horizontal and 221 lw/ph vertical. This falls in about the middle of the range of our comparison phones. We were actually impressed at how well the HTC Touch did in this test considering the resolution; the videos are small, but they have a decent level of detail.
| Cell Phone | lw/ph horizontal/vertical | Score |
| HTC Touch | 204 / 221 | 4.51 |
| Helio Ocean | 283.2 / 160.1 | 4.53 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | n/a - no video recording | 0.00 |
| HTC Mogul | 230.5 / 140.9 | 3.04 |
| Palm Centro | 249 / 274 | 6.82 |
| Apple iPhone | n/a - no video recording | 0.00 |
Video Compression (3.0)
The HTC Touch captures video in a variant of MPEG-4 using a 3GP container. This might not mean a lot to you, but it helps us address a potential issue. Although the files produced have a .mp4 extension, some video players may have trouble with them unless you change the extension to 0.3gp. You can also create vanilla 3GP video files and H263 encoded ones, but these are just variants of 3GP.
Interface (7.0)
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The video camera interface is the same you find in the stills camera, except for the black bars on the left and right since the whole screen isn't used for the viewfinder and there are less functions available. We still thought that it was clean and easy to use.
Manual Control (0.0)
The HTC Touch doesn't have any manual controls for video capture.
Zoom (1.0)
The HTC Touch offers a 2x digital zoom when recording video. Of course, all this does is crop and enlarge your video, reducing the quality of the video so much it's almost unwatchable.
Editing (0.0)
There are no video editing functions on the HTC Touch.
Modes (4.0)
The HTC Touch offers the same metering options you see on the stills camera, allowing you to control from which point or points in the scene light is judged. Manual brightness controls are also available, as are some white balance presets.
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