Palm Treo 755p Cell Phone Review - Imaging
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Alfredo Padilla Published on December 20, 2007 Comment on this |
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Resolution (2.23)
To test the resolution of photos taken by the Treo 755p we take photos of an industry standard resolution chart and use the Imatest software to analyze the photos. Imatest produces a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph), which measures how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together.
The Treo 755p scored did not do well in this test, scoring 732 lw/ph horizontal and 769 lw/ph vertical. You can see below that a lot of our comparison phones performed poorly in this section with the Curve the best of the bunch. The Treo 755p's performance sits right between what we saw from the Treo 750 and the Centro, both of which also have 1.3 megapixel cameras.
| Cell Phone | Palm Treo 755p | Palm Centro | Palm Treo 750 |
| Score | 2.23 | 1.41 | 3.57 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 732/769 | 581/596 | 859.9/773.4 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
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| Cell Phone | BlackBerry Curve 8320 | T-Mobile Shadow | Sidekick LX |
| Score | 5.25 | 2.28 | 2.55 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 1087/933 | 741/746 | 782/662 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
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Color (6.36)
To test the quality of color in the Treo 755p's photos we take photographs of the industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart, which displays twenty-four different colors. These photos are then analyzed by Imatest, which compares the captured colors to those from the original chart.
Imatest produces the chart above, that shows you the differences between the captured colors and the original ones. Imatest also produces the chart below, where you see the ideal color marked with a square and the captured color with a circle. The longer the line between the two the more inaccurate the color capture.
You can see from these charts that the had some problems with blues, reds and greens, but nothing major. This amount of color error shouldn't be sufficient to ruin your photos. The Treo 755p ended up performing about as well as the camera on the Treo 750, although it was beat out by the Centro.
| Cell Phone | Palm Treo 755p | Palm Centro | Palm Treo 750 |
| Score | 6.36 | 8.08 | 6.69 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
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| Cell Phone | BlackBerry Curve 8320 | T-Mobile Shadow | Sidekick LX |
| Score | 4.92 | 5.61 | 4.00 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
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Noise (1.17)
To test noise we take photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at four lighting levels ranging from bright to very low. We then use Imatest to analyze the amount of noise produced at each lighting level. The Treo 755p performed middling in this test, although you'll note from the table below that there's not a lot of difference between the noise produced by cell phone cameras. Frankly they're all pretty bad.
| Cell Phone | Score |
| Palm Treo 755p | 1.17 |
| Palm Centro | 0.91 |
| Palm Treo 750 | 1.35 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 1.41 |
| T-Mobile Shadow | 1.23 |
| Sidekick LX | 0.76 |
Live Preview (7.5)
The live preview on the Treo 755p take up about three quarter of the screen with the bottom quarter showing you the various controls available. We found the live preview did a good job showing you exactly what you're going to get in the final photo. It also did a good job when panning, with very little blurring or pixelation. Interestingly, we found it a better live preview than on the Palm Centro or the Treo 750.
Unlocked Standby to First Shot (7.41)
We were able to go from the home screen on the Treo 755p to a new photo in only 2.7 seconds. This is a pretty good time for a cell phone, you can see below that the Treo 755p beat out all of its comparison phones in this test, including the Centro and Treo 750. We found that even though the camera took a moment to launch you could just hit the shutter button before it was fully up and it would start the shutter. This might make it a little hard to appropriately frame your shots, though, and if you need to wait for the camera to completely launch it will take a second longer.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Palm Treo 755p | 2.7 | 7.41 |
| Palm Centro | 3.8 | 5.26 |
| Palm Treo 750 | 5.77 | 3.47 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 2.9 | 6.90 |
| T-Mobile Shadow | 3.2 | 6.25 |
| Sidekick LX | 3.3 | 6.06 |
Shot to Shot Time (1.14)
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 to do this test, but as the Treo 755p lacks this we had to do it manually. We did turn off the automatic preview so we could take photos faster. Under this situation we were able to take five photos in 13.2 seconds, which works out to 0.38 frames per second (fps). This is pretty slow, but as you can see below, a lot of phones are slow in this area. What this means is that you're going to have trouble capturing action shots, as that's where capturing a series of photos quickly is most important.
| Cell Phone | FPS | Score |
| Palm Treo 755p | 0.38 | 1.14 |
| Palm Centro | 0.28 | 0.84 |
| Palm Treo 750 | 0.61 | 1.83 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 0.35 | 1.05 |
| T-Mobile Shadow | 1.76 | 5.28 |
| Sidekick LX | 0.21 | 0.63 |
Shutter to Shot Time (4.65)
Shutter to shot time is a measure of how much lag you get between depressing the capture button and actually taking a photo. The Treo 755p did pretty well in this test with a shutter to shot time of 0.43 seconds. You can see in the chart below that this is tied for the best time amongst our comparison handsets. It's also significantly better than either the Centro or the Treo 750. What this means is that you won't have to hope your subject sits still for a long time, only about half a second.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Palm Treo 755p | 0.43 | 4.65 |
| Palm Centro | 0.88 | 2.27 |
| Palm Treo 750 | 0.88 | 2.27 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 0.43 | 4.65 |
| T-Mobile Shadow | 0.9 | 2.22 |
| Sidekick LX | 1.2 | 1.67 |
Interface (8.0)
The Treo 755p camera interface is typical Palm OS fare, which means it's very easy to use with very few controls. The top part of the screen is the viewfinder with a bar on the bottom quarter that is used to house the controls. The center select key takes a photo while up/down toggles the 2x digital zoom. Move to the right and you can control where photos are saved and to the left are icons to toggle between still/video and access your album. There's also a counter showing you how many photos you can take. We have to say that we normally prefer more camera-like interfaces as found on the T-Mobile Shadow, but given how simple the controls on the Treo 755p are this is a solid solution.
Photo Album Software Internal (7.0)
The photo album software gives you a list of available albums with the option to view all pictures and videos at the top. You can create new albums to organize your photos. You can set up a slide show by hitting the large play button with just a few settings like the type of transition and how long each item is shown. The software, as you expect from Palm OS, is simple and easy to use.
Manual Control (0.0)
The Treo 755p doesn't offer you any manual controls for your camera.
Zoom (1.0)
The Treo 755p has a simple 2x digital zoom available for photos. All digital zooms are of limited utility as all they do is crop and enlarge what you're seeing, which is no different than what you might do with software on your computer.
Focus (0.0)
The Treo 755p has a fixed focus camera. Most cell phone cameras are fixed focus, but for a higher end device like the Treo 755p we wish that they had included a higher end auto-focus camera. While we're at it we'd also like more than 1.3 Megapixels too.
Flash (0.0)
The Treo 755p doesn't have a flash.
Metering (0.0)
The Treo 755p doesn't offer any metering controls, not even simple brightness adjustments.
White Balance (0.0)
Most cell phone cameras offer you some basic presets for white balance, but the Treo 755p lacks even these.
Image Handling (3.0)
There are some basic image handling options on the Treo 755p. You can add an audio caption to an image, rotate it or draw on it. You can also add text boxes to the photo. There's no support for more advanced options like red eye correction, color correct or resizing images.
Video
Overall Video Score (6.0)
The video produces by the Treo 755p is pretty good quality. It's captured at 352 x 288 and 15 frames per second, which is better than any phones but high end Nokia devices like the N95. The video is good enough to use online like on Youtube and will even look decent on a computer monitor at full screen. We wouldn't recommend trying to view it on a big screen TV though.
Video Resolution (6.72)
To test video resolution we take a video of the same resolution chart we use in the still camera test. We then run frames from this video through Imatest to produce a line widths per pixel height (lw/ph) score. This score tells you how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together. Confirming our good impression of the Treo 755p's video capture it did well in this test scoring 242 lw/ph horizontal and 272 lw/ph vertical. You can see below that it put up the best score amongst our comparison phones, handily beating out both the Centro and the Treo 750.
| Cell Phone | lw/ph horizontal/vertical | Score |
| Palm Treo 755p | 247/272 | 6.72 |
| Palm Centro | 249/274 | 6.82 |
| Palm Treo 750 | 132.4/184.6 | 2.44 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | n/a - no video recording | 0.00 |
| T-Mobile Shadow | 155/168 | 2.59 |
| Sidekick LX | n/a - no video recording | 0.00 |
Video Compression (2.0)
Video on the Treo 755p is captured in 3GP format, which is fairly standard for mobile devices. There are no alternative options available.
Interface (7.5)
The Treo 755p's video interface is pretty much the same as the stills interface. The top of the screen is still the viewfinder while the bottom is given over to controls. There's no zoom control for video capture, instead up/down on the D-Pad are used for pause and stop. All the other shortcuts are the same and the counter is replaced with a timer showing you how much video you can capture.
Manual Control (0.0)
There are no manual controls for video capture on the Treo 755p.
Zoom (0.0)
Unlike the stills camera there's not even a digital zoom for video capture on the Treo 755p.
Editing (0.0)
You can't edit videos on the Treo 755p.
Modes (0.0)
There are no specific modes on the Treo 755p for capturing MMS or email video.
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