Palm Treo Pro Cell Phone Review - Imaging

The Treo Pro's camera does an average job with resolution, slightly better in terms of color accuracy, and much worse in terms of noise. We don't recommend that anyone expect their cell phone's camera to take the place of their dedicated digital camera, and with this mindset, the Treo Pro will serve you adequately. Its interface for still images and video recording is straightforward, as are the album applications for managing both video types.

Resolution (4.31)
To evaluate a camera's resolution, we take pictures of an industry-standard chart and run the resulting images through image analysis software made by Imatest. Imatest analyzes the pictures to measure the point at which black and white lines lose definition and begin to blur into each other, expressed in line widths per picture height (lw/ph) on the horizontal and vertical. As with most things we measure, higher numbers mean better resolution.

A picture of the resolution chart taken with the Treo Pro

The Treo Pro has a 2-megapixel camera and it at least performs better than the iPhone 3G that also has a 2-megapixel camera. It does not, however, out-do the Treo 750 that performed better here despite its 1.3-megapixel camera.

Cell Phone	Palm Treo Pro	T-Mobile G1	HTC Touch Diamond
Score	4.31	4.04	6.54
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	985 / 979	954 / 962	1213 / 1214
Image of Resolution Chart

Cell Phone	Nokia E71	Apple iPhone 3G	Palm Treo 750
Score	6.46	3.33	3.57
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1206 / 1329	866 / 897	860 / 773
Image of Resolution Chart

Color (5.31)
To evaluate a camera's color accuracy, we use another industry-standard chart, the GretagMacbeth chart. Pictures of that chart using the phone's camera are then run through the Imatest software, which then provides data on how closely the camera reproduced the chart's colors. The data comes in the form of 2 charts - the first is a view of the GretagMacbeth chart and gives a visual demonstration of what the camera capture. In this chart, the smallest rectangle shows the actual "correct" color, the largest rectangle shows what the camera captured, and the last interior rectangle shows what the camera should have captured with correction for lighting.

The Treo Pro's color chart

Imatest also generates a color error chart to display graphically how "off" the camera was in capturing color. In this chart, the squares indicate what the ideal color capture would be and the circles show how the camera captured that particular color. The line connecting each square and circle represents how accurately the camera captured the color - the longer the line, the more inaccurate the camera was. The chart also shows the level of saturation for each color captured by the camera - if the circles are closer to the center of the chart than the squares, the camera is capturing under-saturated color. If the squares are closer to the center of the chart than the circles, the camera is capturing over-saturated colors.

The Treo Pro's color error chart

As you can see in the Treo Pro's color error chart, the circles are closer to the center of the chart, indicating that it captures under-saturated color throughout most of the color spectrum, except for the greens for the most part.

Cell Phone	Palm Treo Pro	T-Mobile G1	HTC Touch Diamond
Score	5.31	2.56	4.08
Color Checker Chart

Cell Phone	Nokia E71	Apple iPhone 3G	Palm Treo 750
Score	4.55	3.90	6.69
Color Checker Chart

Noise (0.62)
The GretagMacbeth color chart is again the tool used to evaluate the level of noise in a phone's camera. We use the phone's camera to take pictures of it at various lighting levels ranging from the equivalent of bright daylight down to candle light. Noise is more prevalent in low-light situations since any capturing errors in the image sensor can produce signals greater or less than what is actually present in the image being captured, resulting in graininess and inaccurate color. The resulting images from the various lighting levels are run through the Imatest software, which evaluates noise consistency through the different lighting levels.

The Treo Pro earned a relatively low score here compared to most of our comparison phones. However, cell phone cameras are generally not meant to replace a dedicated digital camera and poor performance here is the rule rather than the exception. Just be aware of the high noise levels when you're taking photos in low light conditions.

Live Preview (6.0)
The Treo Pro's live preview takes up most of the screen, with black bands at the top and bottom where status icons and menu availability are shown. It doesn't keep up with fast movement very well, showing a fair amount of pixelation and odd banding where a portion of the preview seems to refresh more quickly than other parts. Despite this, captured images appear almost exactly as they are framed.

The Treo Pro's live preview

The status icons at the top show, from left to right, camera or video mode, the self-timer length, if selected, and the number of pictures that can be saved to the selected storage location. At the bottom of the screen is an arrow on the left side that takes you to the photo album, and on the right side is a link to the camera's full settings menu. In the middle is a tab that reveals quick settings for resolution, white balance, brightness, the image storage location, and the self-timer. All of these icons and links disappear after a short time if not used, and you must tap on the screen to get them to appear again.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (4.93)
Many people use their cell phones to capture impromptu moments on the fly, and to see how quickly this can be done, we time how quickly an image is captured starting from the home screen in the unlocked state. The Treo Pro's camera application has a default shortcut where it can be accessed immediately by pressing and holding the convenience key below the volume up/down buttons, making it easy to get there. This Treo performed well in this test, taking an average of just 4.06 seconds to complete it for second place among our comparison phones behind the iPhone 3G. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shot to Shot Time (6.12)
Sometimes, multiple shots one after the other are the objective and we time how quickly a phone's camera can do this by taking 5 successive pictures of a stopwatch. We disable the post-capture review, if possible, and enable burst mode, if available. On the Treo Pro, it's possible to turn off post-capture review and there is also a burst mode that takes 5 images in quick succession. The Treo Pro was able to capture 5 pictures in a very quick 2.45 seconds, which works out to 2.04 frames per second. This level of performance puts the Treo Pro at  the top of the heap among our comparison phones by a wide margin. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shutter to Shot Time (2.80)
Once you press a camera's capture button, shutter activation isn't instantaneous. This is a critical function for professional photographers with dedicated digital and film cameras, but usually not so much with cell phone cameras. Regardless, this dictates how quickly you'll be able to record an image after pressing the capture button and we test this by taking a picture of a stopwatch started at the moment the capture button is pressed, and the resulting image shows us when the shutter activated to record the picture. The Treo Pro's camera took an average of .71 seconds to capture an image, a time better than all of our comparison phones with the exception of the iPhone 3G. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Interface (5.5)
The Treo Pro's camera and video interface isn't entirely straightforward with modes and settings accessed in different ways that aren't intuitive and require a trip to the user guide. One thing that is somewhat annoying is the fact that the status icons and other indicators disappear from the screen after a few moments and there's no way to keep them on the screen. Switching between the still image and video modes is done quickly and easily by pressing right or left on the D-pad, and scrolling even more this way will get you to the SMS video, contact image, panorama, sport, and burst modes.

The Treo Pro's camera's capture settings

Getting to the settings is easy, though they are separated into two groups and it's not clear why you need to access some settings in one place and others in different way through the interface. The menu accessed by tapping on the arrow in the bottom center of the screen allows you to change the resolution, white balance, brightness, self-timer, and storage location. The settings accessed through the icon on the right of the screen allow you to set effects, turn time stamp on or off, change the picture quality, the metering mode, and select the storage location again. Another tab in this menu offers 3 pages of settings for the capture format, shutter sound, and more.

Photo Album Software Internal (6.0)
The Treo Pro's photo album software shows stored images in a 3-by-3 date-sorted thumbnail grid by default. The sorting order can be changed to name or size, but the thumbnail view cannot be changed to show more or fewer images at once. Slideshows are possible and when running, there's a neat little touch-only control bar that pops up in the top right when you tap on the screen or press the D-pad's center selection button, and you can also advance forward and backward with the D-pad. There isn't much you can change about how the slide show works, only whether they are optimized for viewing portrait or landscape pictures with no options to change timing or transition effects.

The Treo Pro's photo album

Clicking or tapping on a single image opens it to an enlarged view, and the Menu offers the ability to send it as an MMS or set it as the home screen's background. You can't zoom in on pictures or pan around them to see any additional details. All in all, this software is quite functional to view saved images without any fancy bells or whistles.

Manual Control (0.0)
It's rare indeed that a cell phone camera offers manual controls, and the Treo Pro is no exception here with no manual controls to speak of.

Zoom (0.0)
The Treo Pro's camera has digital zoom up to 8x, though it only works when the resolution is set to an option less than the maximum 2-megapixels, and we award no points when this is the case.

Focus (0.0)
The Treo Pro's camera lens is a fixed focus one, for which it earns no points.

Flash (0.0)
The Treo Pro does not have a flash.

Metering (4.0)
The Treo Pro's camera does have 2 metering mode settings - center area and average. These settings are relatively rare on camera phones, with only 2 of our comparison phones offering this - the HTC Touch Diamond and the Nokia E71.

White Balance (2.0)
The Treo Pro has 5 preset white balance modes that earn it 2 points in this area: automatic, daylight, moonlight, incandescent, and fluorescent.

Image Handling (6.0)
The Treo Pro offers more photo editing options than we see on the average cell phone, allowing rotating, cropping, renaming, re-saving, and an Auto Correct option to automatically adjust brightness and contrast.

Video Quality (0.0)
To assess a cell phone's overall video quality, we record a video with the phone and save it to a computer for viewing and evaluation relative to the videos taken with other cell phones. Unfortunately, the video recorded by the Treo Pro could not be opened on the computers we tried, PC or Mac, regardless of the process used to transfer the video to the computer. We could not award any points to the Treo Pro in this area as a result.

Video Resolution (0.0)
As noted in the Video Quality section, we were unable to open any videos recorded with the Treo Pro on any computer and were thus unable to run randomly-selected frames of the footage through the Imatest software to generate a resolution score.

Video Compression (4.0)
The Treo Pro captures video in 2 formats - H.263 and MPEG4. MPEG4 is the default out of the box, and the H.263 format is not one we see all that often but it is nice to have some choice here.

Interface (5.5)
The Treo Pro's video interface is pretty much exactly like the still image interface, as is typical, with the exception of the settings. Starting and stopping recording is as easy as pressing the D-pad's center select button and once you're used to how the settings can be accessed in their various places, the interface is a cinch to navigate.

The Treo Pro's video camera settings menu

Manual Control (0.0)
As with the still image camera, there are no manual controls for video recording.

Zoom (1.0)
The Treo Pro's digital zoom works in video mode, though only to 2x in any format or at any resolution setting, earning it 1 point in this area.

Editing (0.0)
It's rare that a cell phone offers video editing right on the device - none of our comparison phones do, and neither does the Treo Pro.

Modes (4.0)
The Treo Pro's video camera has 4 effects that can be selected to add a little faux-artsiness to your videos: Grayscale, Sepia, Cool, and Negative. As with the still image camera, the light metering mode can be adjusted between center area and average and the white balance can be adjusted between 5 presets.

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