Helio Ocean Review - Imaging
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Richard Baguley Published on May 16, 2007 Comment on this |
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Resolution (2.18)
The maximum resolution that the camera built into the Ocean can capture is 1600 by 1200; about 2 megapixels. But there’s more to resolution that megapixels: we test cameras by photographing a test target and then running the captured images through the professional image analysis program Imatest. This produces a figure for resolution called line width per picture height (lw/ph), which represents the maximum number of alternate black and white lines that the camera could capture before they started to blur together.
The 2-megapixel camera in the Ocean produced a horizontal lw/ph rating of 701, and a vertical rating of 476.6. That’s a reasonable result for a cell phone camera, and is in line with the resolution ratings for other cell phone cameras, such as the Sprint Upstage (which managed 660.8 and 549.2). But these measurements are way behind what even a cheap dedicated still camera can capture: the $179.99 Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W35 recently reviewed by our sister site digitalcamerainfo.com had an lw/ph rating of 1573 by 1548, which shows just how much better dedicated camera are than the ones built into cell phones.
Color (6.66)
We use Imatest to test the color accuracy of the images that cell phones like the Ocean capture as well; we photograph an industry standard color chart, and Imatest analyzes the captured image to compare the captured colors with the real thing. Imatest produces this chart which shows the true colors on the chart (in the small vertical rectangle), the adjusted colors (in the middle rectangle) and the original captured colors in the outer square.
Noise (1.14)
We measure the noise in images by taking several images at a range of lighting conditions, then measuring the amount of noise in each image. The Ocean had relatively little noise in the images taken with plenty of light, but things quickly got noisy as the light level feel. At 60 lux (about the light level you would get in a dimply-lit room) there was lots of obvious noise, which seriously detracted from the quality of the images. But, to be fair, the Ocean was not much worse than other cell phone cameras, most of which tend to capture noisy images in low light.
Live Preview (8.0)
The live preview of the camera application of the Ocean is good; the image uses the entire screen (except if you are shooting with the slider in the keypad position; the preview then only uses about half of the screen) and shows information such as the resolution and flash mode. Unlocked Standby to First Shot (4.88)
In this test, we measure how long it takes to go from the phone in standby mode to taking a photo, as if you’d just spotted something interesting and wanted to quickly take a picture. For the Ocean, this took us 4.1 seconds: a reasonable time for a phone. This was after some practice, though; you have to slide the keypad out, press one of the soft keys to open the main menu, select the Snap application from this menu, then select the camera option in this. You can also start the camera by simply opening the phone to the keypad position and pressing the shutter button, but this wasn’t any quicker.
Shot to Shot Time (3.75)
The Ocean has several modes that take multiple images: we found that the auto series 9 cuts mode took 9 shots in 7.9 seconds at the highest supported resolution of 640 by 480 (the higher resolutions don’t allow the use of this burst mode). That’s a pretty pedestrian speed of 1.25 frames per second; not enough to capture any serious action. There are some interesting other features, though, such as the Split Series mode, which creates a mosaic of up to 16 images that are taken when you press the shutter; fun if you are looking to create a kind of moving portrait.
Shutter to Shot Time (3.33)
Shutter to shot time is a measure of how long it takes the phone to take a photo from the time you depress the capture button until it stops processing the image. The Helio Ocean took .6 seconds to capture an image after you have depressed the shutter key. This is a solid time for a camera phone, better than the Treo 750's .88 seconds but slightly worst than the Treo 700p's .5 seconds.
Interface (7.5)
The camera interface of the Ocean is pretty good; it shows quite a lot of information in a convenient and easy to use way. You can also hide all of the Most of the controls are pretty logical; the directional pad controls he image brightness (by pushing it left and right) and the digital zoom (pushing it up and down), while one of the soft keys accesses the menu, and another accesses the photo album software. A third controls the flash mode, but the fourth has the rather odd task of setting the white balance; a control that most users aren’t going to use that often. It would have made more sense, perhaps, for this to provide access to the image size control, or to switch between photo and video mode.
Photo Album Software Internal (5.0) The Album software in the Ocean is pretty basic – it can’t create slideshows or edit the images. But it does have some unique features, such as the Helio UP feature, which uploads images to Helio’s own online photo hosting service. The uploaded images can be titled, have short descriptions added and can even be tagged with a location using the built-in GPS receiver.
Manual Control (0.0)
The Ocean does not have a manual mode; there is no way to directly access settings such as the shutter speed or aperture. Most users won’t miss these (and the automatic settings did a pretty good job), but users who are used to tweaking settings themselves will find the Ocean a frustrating device to use.
Zoom (1.0)
The Ocean only has a 2x digital zoom; there is no optical zoom. And using the digital zoom limits the resolution of the captured image to 800 by 600; you can’t use the zoom at the maximum resolution of 1600 by 1200 pixels.
Focus (0.0)
The camera lens on the Ocean is a fixed-focus model that works down to a distance of TK; that means no close-up shots. On the upside, that that you don’t have to wait for the lens to focus; it is ready instantly as long as you aren’t photographing anything too close.
Flash (3.0)
Metering (2.0)
The Ocean doesn’t have the sort of metering controls that you’ll find on a dedicated still camera: there is no spot or center weighted metering mode that changes how the camera judges the correct exposure for the image. The closest it gets is the brightness control, which decreases or increases the brightness of the iamge. Somewhat confusingly, this goes from 0 (the darkest setting) to TK (the lightest), with the normal setting at TK. Most cameras underline the darker/lighter nature of this control by giving the darker settings minus numbers; the Ocean does not.
White Balance (5.0)
Although it has no manual control, the Ocean has a decent set of white balance controls, including a full auto mode and presets for outside, cloudy, florescent and bulb. There is no way to set the white balance value directly, though.
Image Handling (0.0)
No features are present for editing or tweaking images; there is no way to resize, crop or otherwise fiddle with images. There isn’t even a red eye removal feature; something we are seeing on a number of other cell phones, such as the Nokia N73 that we reviewed recently.
Video
Overall Video Score (3.0)
Much like the still images, the video the Ocean captures is fine for the odd candid video, but don’t expect it to replace a dedicated camcorder; the video is small, heavily compressed and doesn’t contain much detail.
Video Resolution (4.53)
We measure the resolution of the video that cell phones capture by taking a video of our resolution target, extracting still frames form this and testing them with Imatest. We measured the captured video as having a pretty average lw/ph value of 283 horizontal and 160.1 vertical. That’s in line with what other cell phones have managed and the videos don’t look much worse or better than others we have tested. Contrast this with a dedicated camcorder, though, and you’ll see how poor it is: the $599 Hitachi DZ-HS 300A that our sister site camcorderinfo.com reviewed recently could resolve 325 lines horizontally and 200 vertically, and that’s the lowest score we’ve seen for some time.
Video Compression (2.0)
Videos can only be captured in 3GP format; there is no way to save videos in the other commonly used formats (such as MPEG-4 or Windows Media).
Interface (7.0) The interface for capturing videos is similar to the camera interface, presenting you with information on the current settings in a clean, smart layout. It shares the same problems as the still image capture application, though; the choice of functions assigned to the 4 soft buttons is a little odd.
Manual Control (0.0)
No manual options are available for controlling how videos are recorded; everything is automatic.
Zoom (0.0)
No zoom is present in video mode; if you want to zoom in on a subject, get up and walk closer.
Editing (0.0)
Videos captured by the Ocean cannot be edited; the only way to edit is to delete them and record them again.
Modes (2.0)
Many cell phones now offer scene modes, which tweak the video settings for certain types of situations. The Ocean isn’t one of them, though; there are no scene modes. You can however choose to capture video specifically for MMS messages.
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