Motorola W385 Cell Phone Review - Imaging
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Mark Brezinski Published on December 28, 2007 Comment on this |
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Resolution (1.22)
The camera's resolution was pretty bad. It only measured 524.3 lw/ph horizontally and 580.4 lw/ph vertically. Typical good cameras will score about 1000 in each lw/ph measurement. Shockingly, as bad as the W385 is, it did better than most of the comparison phones which actually cost money. Even so, we'd recommend you keep your captures on the phone, because trying to enlarge them in any way will just make a mess.
| Cell Phone | Motorola W385 | Motorola Krzr K1m | Motorola Razr V3m |
| Score | 1.22 | 0.62 | 1.13 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 524.3/580.4 | 386.6/454.2 | 521.7/242.2 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
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| Cell Phone | Samsung Juke | LG Chocolate VX8550 | Samsung Blast |
| Score | 0.40 | 1.69 | 0.68 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 300/295 | 616.8/569.5 | 392.1/345.6 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
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Color (4.20)
The W385 handles color surprisingly well -- we mean this relative to its class, because its score still isn't very good. Really, its only problem lies in its tendency to undersaturate yellows, light greens, and oranges. Other than this, the representations aren't too far off. Reds are especially well rendered.
The graph above and left is an actual capture, as taken by the W385, of our GretagMacbeth color chart. This chart displays 24 commonly-photographed colors (blue skies, red roses, green grass, flesh tones, etc.). Imatest drops two images over this picture. The smaller, innermost rectangle is the ideal color. The outer overlay is the ideal adjusted for luminance. The difference between the ideal and captured colors is then graphed in the color gamut below. The longer the lines, the further off the capture is.
| Cell Phone | Motorola W385 | Motorola Krzr K1m | Motorola Razr V3m |
| Score | 4.20 | 3.59 | 3.26 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
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| Cell Phone | Samsung Juke | LG Chocolate VX8550 | Samsung Blast |
| Score | 5.50 | 4.69 | 4.48 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
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Noise (1.28)
| Cell Phone | Score |
| Motorola W385 | 1.28 |
| Motorola Krzr K1m | 0.76 |
| Motorola Razr V3m | 1.05 |
| Samsung Juke | 1.50 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 1.27 |
| Samsung Blast | 1.44 |
Live Preview (3.5)
The W385's live preview is a little laggy and blurry when the handset is quickly panned, but we were really surprised with how well it kept up. Images will look very pixellated, however. Overall, while the live preview isn't very good, we were actually impressed with its performance given the phone.
Unlocked Standby to First Shot (10.75)
The Q385 is a bit of a quick-draw. We were able to flip it open, boot the camera application (via the shortcut button) and snap a picture in 1.86 seconds. This is very quick. Typically phones can achieve this feat in 2-3 seconds, but the W385 undercuts them all but a relatively sizeable margin. While your pictures might not be of a good quality, the phone certainly wastes no time in taking them.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Motorola W385 | 1.86 | 10.75 |
| Motorola Krzr K1m | 2.5 | 8.00 |
| Motorola Razr V3m | 3.5 | 5.71 |
| Samsung Juke | 1.89 | 10.58 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 2.36 | 8.47 |
| Samsung Blast | 3.75 | 5.33 |
Shot to Shot Time (1.23)
The W385 was able to take a series of five pictures in about 12.3 seconds. This is about .41 frames per second, which is fairly slow. This slow fps rate is partially because the phone has no burst mode and partially because we couldn't turn off the picture preview after each capture. With slow speeds like this, spontaneous photographers will have to hope they get it right the first time.
| Cell Phone | FPS | Score |
| Motorola W385 | 0.41 | 1.23 |
| Motorola Krzr K1m | 0.23 | 0.69 |
| Motorola Razr V3m | 0.2 | 0.60 |
| Samsung Juke | 0.56 | 1.68 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 0.38 | 1.14 |
| Samsung Blast | 2.11 | 6.33 |
Shutter to Shot Time (5.00)
The time between pressing the shutter key and the camera actually snapping a picture was about 0.4 seconds. As you could probably guess from the table of scores below, this is slightly better than average. There are exceptions, such as the Juke, which is ridiculously fast. Many smart phones take between two and three seconds.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Motorola W385 | 0.4 | 5.00 |
| Motorola Krzr K1m | 0.4 | 5.00 |
| Motorola Razr V3m | 0.43 | 4.65 |
| Samsung Juke | 0.09 | 22.22 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 0.22 | 9.09 |
| Samsung Blast | 0.35 | 5.71 |
Interface (3.0)
The W385's camera interface is basic and not very good. The top of the screen retains battery and signal information in a black border. The bottom of the screen is taken up by a large toolbar with a zoom icon, current resolution, and a camera graphic. We weren't sure what the camera icon was for since the phone can't capture video. Perhaps test groups showed users tended to get confused, thinking they'd stumbled onto a window to an alternate dimension. In any case, left and will digitally zoom in and out, the left soft key will open up the album, and the right soft key will open up the options menu. In this menu you can change resolution, brightness, and white balance. You can also add a timer or overlay a color effect or frame. There isn't much here, so we would've liked to see some sort of transparent menu that popped up on the live preview.
Photo Album Software Internal (2.5)
The photo album software is also fairly basic. Photos are displayed two-by-two, without any option to enlarge or shrink the thumbnails. There really aren't any options besides sending the picture, renaming it, or deleting it. You can also jump back to the camera to take more pictures. Viewing a picture will let you edit it with the phone's basic editing software. There are no options for sorting or organizing your photos. There is also no support for slideshows.
Manual Control (0.0)
The W385 doesn't provide any manual control.
Zoom (1.0)
The only zoom on the phone is a digital zoom with two magnification levels. Digital zoom just crops and enlarges pictures, which isn't especially useful since it's essentially capturing at an even lower resolution than it normally would. This feature is also a bit redundant on the W385 since it has a built-in crop feature.
Focus (0.0)
The W385 has a fixed focus, so what you see is what you get.
Flash (0.0)
The camera doesn't have a flash.
Metering (1.0)
The only metering option is a brightness slider. There are two brighter and two darker settings. The camera doesn't have more advanced metering options like spot or center-weighted metering.
White Balance (2.0)
There are four white balance presets in addition to the default, automatic setting: sunny, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent, and darkness.
Image Handling (10.0)
Believe it or not, this basic camera also comes with some basic editing software. When viewing a picture, an edit option is available via the right soft key's menu. With this you can crop, rotate, and flip your image. There are also options to remove red-eye, an auto-enhance, and -- we can't even believe this -- a smudge feature. Photoshop this isn't, but this little phone has better image-handling software than most smart phones.
Video
Overall Video Score (0.0)
The W385 can't capture video, which certainly doesn't bode well for its score in this section.
Video Resolution (0.0)
N/A: Can't capture video.
Video Compression (0.0)
N/A: Can't capture video.
Interface (0.0)
N/A: Can't capture video.
Manual Control (0.0)
N/A: Can't capture video.
Zoom (0.0)
N/A: Can't capture video.
Editing (0.0)
N/A: Can't capture video.
Modes (0.0)
N/A: Can't capture video.
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