LG enV2 Cell Phone Review - Imaging
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Alfredo Padilla Published on May 09, 2008 Comment on this |
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The LG enV2's imaging capabilities are decent for a cell phone. Although the resolution of photos capture was pretty terrible we were happy with the color fidelity. We also liked the interface of the camera. The video capture was better than the average cell phone, good enough to throw up on Youtube. |
To test the resolution of photos captured by the LG enV2's two megapixel camera we take photos of an industry standard resolution chart. We then run these photos through Imatest software, which produces a score called line widths per picture height (lw/ph), a measure of how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they begin blurring together.
industry standard resolution chart
| Cell Phone | LG enV2 |
HTC SMT5800 | Samsung SLM |
| Score | 0.48 | 4.93 | 0.88 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 601/631 | 1053/836.7 | 444/476 |
| Image of Resolution Chart |  |
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| Cell Phone | Sidekick LX | LG Voyager | Samsung M520 |
| Score | 2.55 | 2.93 | 0.32 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 782/662 |
837.9/838.9 |
266.9/200.2 |
| Image of Resolution Chart |  |
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Color (6.39)
The LG enV2 performed much better in our test of color fidelity than it did in our resolution test. To get this score we take photos of the industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart, which displays 24 different colors. We then use Imatest software to compare the colors captured by the phone's camera to the original colors. Imatest produces two charts, which you can see below. The chart on top shows you the original color chart with the captured and original colors in different boxes.
The chart on the bottom shows you how far off color were graphically. The squares on this chart represent the ideal while the circles represent the actual captured colors. You can see by the relatively short lines between the two that the LG enV2 did a solid job reproducing colors. There was some drift in almost all areas, but none of it was huge. By contrast take a look at the color line charts produced by the SMT5800 or Samsung SLM below to see what truly poor color capture looks like.
| Cell Phone | LG enV2 |
HTC SMT5800 | Samsung SLM |
| Score | 6.39 | 2.48 | 2.15 |
| Color Checker Chart |  |
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| Cell Phone | Sidekick LX | LG Voyager | Samsung M520 |
| Score | 4.00 | 5.31 | 5.45 |
| Color Checker Chart |  |
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Noise (0.41)
Noise is always a problem for cell phone's You can see in our chart of scores below that not a single phone got a score above two while the average for all cell phones was just about one. This is because of the small sensors that are used in cell phone cameras. Even considering this, however, the LG enV2 stood out for its poor performance. To get this score we take photos of the same GretagMacbeth color chart at four different lighting levels. We then use Imatest to get the noise at each one. We look at both overall noise and consistency across lighting levels to produce our final score. The enV2 actually did fairly well, for a cell phone, at the three brightest lighting levels, but it's performance at the lowest lighting level was so poor that it dragged down its overall score.
Live Preview (5.0)
You can use the camera on the LG enV2 with both the phone closed using the small external display or wiht it open using the much larger internal display. We can't imaging that many will choose to use it closed as the external display shows just a very small sliver of what you actually capture, making it almost completely uselss. The internal live preview is much better by dint of being larger, it takes up the entire 2.4 inch display. It also does a good job reproducing what the actual photo will look like with good color fidelity. The refresh rate is solid, even when you pan across it won't blur much. The only issue is that the phone is a little awkward to hold in this manner, especiallly since the camera lens is on the right side of the back of the phone when held horizontally and you'll find that your finger naturally covers it up. Apart from this, though, the live preview when the phone is open is pretty good.
Unlocked Standby to First Shot (6.67)
This test looks at how long it takes to go from phone closed on the home screen until you capture a photo. The LG enV2 took three seconds to complete this process. As the external display is almost useless for capturing photos we took the time to open a phone up to take the photo. You can probably be a little faster if you use the external display, but as we mentioned above you're not going to know what you're capturing. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Shot to Shot Time (0.78)
Shot to shot time is a measure of how quickly you can take a series of photographs. When possible we use a phone's burst mode for this test, unfortunately the LG enV2 lacks a burst mode so we had to take the photos manually. Doing this it took us 19.2 seconds to capture five photos, which works out to 0.26 frames per second (fps). This is pretty poor, we found that we were slowed down because we couldn't turn off the photo review, so after each one we had to tell the phone to save it, which then took even more time. You can see from the chart below that we've seen performance this bad before, but we've also seen much better. The take-away here is that the enV2 is not a good phone to take action shots where you want to be able to take a bunch of photos quickly in a row in the hopes of getting at least one good one. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Shutter to Shot Time (3.64)
This tests looks at how long it takes for the phone to actually capture a photo once you've hit the shutter key. We found that it took 0.55 seconds to capture the photo once you've hit the button. This is decent for a cell phone, it's good enough that when you tell people to say "cheese!" you'll probably be able to capture what you want. The problem with phones that have really slow shutter to shot time like the Sidekick LX is that you risk having the scene change before you capture it. This shouldn't be an issue with the enV2. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Interface (7.0)
We're not even going to talk about the camera interface with the external screen, suffice to say you don't want to use it. Thankfully the interface when you open the LG enV2 up is pretty good. The entire screen is taken up by the scene with some white icons overlaid to give you information about photo size, storage location and labels for your soft keys. The left soft key takes you to your album software while the right soft key opens the menu system.
camera interface
The menu is very camera-like, with a series of tabs along the bottom of the screen and options that appear above the selected tab. You move between tabs by using left/right on the D-Pad and make a selection within a tab using up/down. The nice thing about the menu is that you still see the scene in the background so you can make an adjustment to something like white balance and immediately see what the effect will be. We were quite pleased with the LG enV2's camera interface.
Photo Album Software Internal (5.0)
The LG enV2's album software is pretty typical for a cell phone. When you launc it you get a 3 x 2 grid of thumbnials. As you selet each thumbnail you see the name of the photo at the top left while at the top right is a counter that shows you how many photos you have in the album and which particular photo is selected. The left soft key is assigned to erase the currently selected photo while the right soft key opens the menu. The D-Pad moves about the thumbnails and pressing the center select button will enlarge the currently selected thumbnail.
album software
Under the options you can do things like send a photo, rename them, print (via Bluetooth), or set the photo as a background or assign it to a contact. You can also choose the option to manage your photos, which allows you to select multiple photos to delete or send them. Unfortunately there is no way to create a photo slideshow and there's no support for organizing your photos into albums or folders. All you can do is move them between the phone memory and an external card. For what it does the interface is solid, but we're missing better organizational features.
Manual Control (0.0)
The LG enV2's camera does not offer you any manual controls.
Zoom (0.0)
The LG enV2 does have a digital zoom, but unfortunately it's not available at the highest resolution level. This makes what is already a not very useful feature, since all digital zoom does is crop and enlarge what you're seeing, into an almost useless one, so we won't be awarding any points for it.
Focus (0.0)
The LG enV2's camera is a fixed focus camera, which means what you see is what you get. We don't award any points for fixed focus cameras, reserving points for auto-focus cameras that generally allow you to take better photos.
Flash (0.0)
The LG enV2 does not have a flash.
Metering (6.0)
Unlike most cell phones the LG enV2 does provide you with some metering options. Metering controls are used to adjust from which point or points in the scene lighting is judged. On the enV2 you can choose between average metering and spot metering, the latter uses the center of the scene rather than the average of the entire scene. The enV2 also includes manual brightness controls that you can access by pressing up/down on the D-Pad while taking a photo.
White Balance (2.0)
Like most cell phones the LG enV2 allows you to choose from a few white balance presets. These include Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Flourescent and Glow. There are no manual white balance controls and no way to set white balance using a white card.
white balance settings
Image Handling (6.0)
The LG enV2 allows you to make a couple of adjustments to images. You can rename them as well as rotating them and cropping them. More advanced features like red-eye removal, color correction or resizing images is not supported.
image editing
Video Quality (5.0)
The quality of video captured by the LG enV2 is pretty good, for a cell phone. The camera captures at a maximum of 320 x 240 pixels at 15 frames per second. We found that the video quality was good enough that you could probably us it for Youtube and even wathcing it full screen on our laptop screen wasn't that terrible. It's not going to look good on a TV screen, however. Color fidelity in the video was decent, but we did see some compression artifacting, not surpsing given that it uses 3GP compression which absolutely smashes the video. We also saw some blur with fast motions like a person waving their hand, but panning slowly worked pretty well.
video resolution settings
Video Resolution (8.79)
To test the resolution captured by the LG enV2's camera we took video of an industry standard resolution chart and then ran stills from the video through Imatest. Imatest produces a line widths per picture height (lw/ph) score, which tells us how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together. The LG enV2 performed pretty well in this test with 293 lw/ph horizontal and 300 lw/ph vertical. You can see from the table below that this is much better than our comparison phones, ableit not quite as good as the top performers in this area like the Nokia N82.
| Cell Phone | lw/ph horizontal/vertical | Score |
| LG enV2 |
293/300 | 8.79 |
| SMT5800 | 125.6/127.9 | 1.61 |
| Samsung SLM | 155/144 |
2.23 |
| Sidekick LX | n/a - no video recording |
0.00 |
| LG Voyager | 222/211 |
4.68 |
| Samsung M520 | 121.4/118.4 | 1.44 |
Video Compression (2.0)
The LG enV2 only captures video in 3GP, which is the standard for mobile video. Although this does a good job of producing small file sizes it also degrades the quality a good bit. We are already pretty happy with the enV2's video capture performance, but we wish that you could choose an alternate for of compression like H264 to get even higher quality video out of it.
Interface (7.0)
The video capture interface on the LG enV2 is very similar to the stills capture, with the entire screen taken up by the viewfinder with a few labels overlaid. The menu system is the same tabbed style, albeit with fewer options. We were quite happy with the stills interface and this is also true for the video interface. In particular we're happy about the entire screen being used for the viewfinder, on many cell phones the vidoe viewfinder is reduced to a small postage stamp sized section of the screen.
video recording interface
Manual Control (0.0)
There are no manual controls on the LG enV2.
Zoom (1.0)
There is a digital zoom on the LG enV2's video camera. You can access it by pressing left/right on the D-pad. We only give a single point for digital zoom since all it does is crop and enlarge the scene. Given the relatively low resolution of mobile video anyways this isn't very useful.
Editing (0.0)
There are no video editing options on the LG enV2.
Modes (3.0)
You can set video recording on the LG enV2 to be limited for MMS video and there's also a night mode available.
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