Sidekick LX Cell Phone Review - Imaging
|
Alfredo Padilla Published on December 11, 2007 Comment on this |
|
|
|
|
Resolution (2.55)
To test resolution we take a series of photos of an industry standard resolution chart and then run those photos through the Imatest software. Imatest produces a score called line widths per pixel height, which is a measure of how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together.
| Cell Phone | Sidekick LX | AT&T Tilt | LG Voyager |
| Score | 2.55 | 4.80 | 2.93 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 782/662 | 1039/1057 | 837.9/838.9 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
 |
 |
| Cell Phone | BlackBerry Curve 8320 | Helio Ocean | Apple iPhone |
| Score | 5.25 | 2.18 | 4.18 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 1087/933 | 701/476.6 | 970/879 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
 |
 |
Color (4.00)
To test the quality of colors produced by the Sidekick LX's camera we take photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart, which displays 24 different colors. These photos are then run through Imatest, which compares the original color the capture color.
| Cell Phone | Sidekick LX | AT&T Tilt | LG Voyager |
| Score | 4.00 | 5.50 | 5.31 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
 |
 |
| Cell Phone | BlackBerry Curve 8320 | Helio Ocean | Apple iPhone |
| Score | 4.92 | 6.66 | 5.22 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
 |
 |
Noise (0.76)
To find out how much noise is produced in photos taken by the Sidekick LX we take photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at four different lighting levels, ranging from very bright to low light. We then run these photos through Imatest to determine the amount of noise produced at each lighting level. Our final score considers both the amount of noise at each lighting level and the consistency of noise across lighting levels. The Sidekick LX performed very poorly in this test, with higher than average noise at every lighting level and particularly poor performance in low light. As you can see below the Sidekick LX put up the worse noise scores amongst our comparison phones, although you'll also note that no camera phone does very well in this test.
| Cell Phone | Score |
| Sidekick LX | 0.76 |
| AT&T Tilt | 1.23 |
| LG Voyager | 0.95 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 1.41 |
| Helio Ocean | 1.14 |
| Apple iPhone | 1.20 |
Live Preview (4.0)
The Sidekick LX's live preview is not very good. We liked that it took up the entire screen, but we noted a lot of noise in the preview, and panning produces artifacts. It did give you a good idea of how the photo will turn out though, especially in terms of color and detail. Given how poor photos from the Sidekick LX's camera are, you're probably well served by a poor live preview, because it lets you know just how badly the pictures are going to come out.
Unlocked Standby to First Shot (6.06)
This test finds out how fast you can whip out your phone and take a photo. We found a serious disparity with the Sidekick LX on this test depending upon where you are saving your photos. If you save them on the internal memory the camera was able to launch up and take a photo in a relatively speedy 1.7 seconds. For some reason, however, saving photos to an external memory card slowed this performance down to 3.3 seconds, which isn't horribly slow, but is going to give you some trouble capturing a shot that may only last a moment. We filled up the phone's internal memory with only a couple of photos so we have to assume that most people will be saving photos to the external card, as such we used that time for our score.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Sidekick LX | 3.3 | 6.06 |
| AT&T Tilt | 3.7 | 5.41 |
| LG Voyager | 5.7 | 3.51 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 2.9 | 6.90 |
| Helio Ocean | 4.1 | 4.88 |
| Apple iPhone | 2.43 | 8.23 |
Shot to Shot Time (0.63)
Shot to shot time is a measure of how quickly you can take a series of photos. This is important if you want to capture an action shot. When possible we do this test using a camera's burst mode, however the Sidekick LX lacks this function so we had to do it manually. The Sidekick LX took 23.8 seconds to take five photos, which works out to 0.21 frames per second (fps). This is a pretty terrible score and is the result not only of us doing the test manually but also of the fact that you can't turn off photo review on the Sidekick LX. You can see below that there were several other phones with terrible results in our comparison group, with only the Helio Ocean and HTC Tilt putting up reasonable scores. What this means is you shouldn't expect to be able to capture an action shot with the Sidekick LX.
| Cell Phone | FPS | Score |
| Sidekick LX | 0.21 | 0.63 |
| AT&T Tilt | 1.36 | 4.08 |
| LG Voyager | 0.15 | 0.45 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 0.35 | 1.05 |
| Helio Ocean | 1.25 | 3.75 |
| Apple iPhone | 0.4 | 1.20 |
Shutter to Shot Time (1.67)
Shutter to shot time is a measure of how long it takes the camera to actually capture a photo once you've hit the shutter button. The Sidekick LX was very inconsistent in this test, posting shutter to shot times ranging from 0.3 seconds all the way up to 1.5 seconds, this was with a large number of repetitions. Normally we like to see a nice consistent number all the time, but in this case we'll have to go with the number we saw most often, which was 1.2 seconds. About 80% of our trials were over a second so although you can occasionally get much better shutter to shot time we wouldn't count on it. As you can see below a shutter to shot time of 1.2 seconds is pretty poor. It's even worse when you consider that the AT&T Tilt and LG Voyager, which were the only two phones to do worse on this test amongst our comparison group, were slowed down by an auto-focus lens. Our other three comparison phones shared a fixed focus lens with the Sidekick LX and did much better on this test. Bottom line is you better hope your subject sits still for awhile when taking a photo.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Sidekick LX | 1.2 | 1.67 |
| AT&T Tilt | 1.64 | 1.22 |
| LG Voyager | 1.3 | 1.54 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 0.43 | 4.65 |
| Helio Ocean | 0.6 | 3.33 |
| Apple iPhone | 0.4 | 5.00 |
Interface (5.0)
Photo Album Software Internal (5.0)
Manual Control (0.0)
The Sidekick LX has no manual controls.
Zoom (0.0)
The Sidekick LX does't even offer a digital zoom.
Focus (0.0)
The Sidekick LX has a fixed focus lens, which means what you see is what you get. We are beginning to see some phones with auto-focus lenses and are disappointed that at the Sidekick LX's price point it lacks this feature. We do not award points for fixed focus lenses.
Flash (3.0)
The Sidekick LX has a simple LED flash that is only good out to a range of about three feet.
Metering (0.0)
There are no metering options on the Sidekick LX, not even brightness controls, which most phones have.
White Balance (0.0)
Unlike the vast majority of cell phone cameras the Sidekick LX has no white balance options. Most camera phones offer you at least a few pre set options.
Image Handling (5.0)
The image handling options on the Sidekick LX are pretty simple, you can rotate photos and resize them to 640 x 480 resolution. Both of these are nice options and more than many phones offer, but once again we've seen better from other smart phone platforms like Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60.
Video
Overall Video Score (0.0)
The Sidekick LX does not support recording of video. In a time when almost every handset on the market can do this we find this very disappointing. Because of this lack the Sidekick LX will receive zeros in all of these sections.
Video Resolution (0.0)
No video recording.
Video Compression (0.0)
No video recording.
Interface (0.0)
No video recording.
Manual Control (0.0)
No video recording.
Zoom (0.0)
No video recording.
Editing (0.0)
No video recording.
Modes (0.0)
No video recording.
| Previous Next | |||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
