Sony Ericsson W350 Cell Phone Review - Imaging

The W350's 1.3-megapixel camera with a fixed focus lense posted the relatively poor resolution and noise results we tend to expect from cell phone cameras, which are essentially add-on features not meant to replace a dedicated digital camera. Regardless, the W350's camera interface is completely unconfusing and its burst mode is wicked fast, and it will serve you well enough to capture spontaneous photos when you don't have your digital camera with you.

Resolution (1.97)
To evaluate a camera's resolution, we take pictures of an industry-standard chart with the phone's camera, set to its highest resolution and quality settings, and run the resulting images through image analysis software made by Imatest. This software 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.

With its 1.3-megapixel camera, the W350 posts relatively poor resolution, unsurprisingly. We don't expect much from cell phone cameras in general, but the W350 still bests a few other comparison phones here, including the Nokia 5310, which has a 2.0-megapixel camera.

A picture of the resolution chart taken with the W350's camera

The W350's camera will be good enough to snap quick pictures when you're out with friends and don't have a dedicated digital camera in hand, but it won't produce pictures good enough for printing at normal sizes.

Cell Phone	Sony Ericsson W350	Nokia 5310	LG Chocolate 3
Score	1.97	1.32	3.43
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	688 / 590	728 / 690	879 / 1117
Image of Resolution Chart

Cell Phone	Sony Ericsson W580i	Samsung Beat	Samsung M520
Score	6.35	0.70	0.32
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1195 / 960	414.5 / 674.9	266.9 / 200.2
Image of Resolution Chart

Color (5.04)
We use another industry-standard chart, the GretagMacbeth chart, to evaluate a camera's color accuracy. We run pictures taken with the phone's camera of this chart 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 captured. 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.

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 less accurate 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 W350's color error chart

Looking at the W350's color error chart, you can see it has the most trouble with yellows and reds and the least trouble with some blues and greens, and it captures under-saturated color across most of the spectrum. This puts it in the middle of the pack of our comparison phones, with its big brother, the Sony Ericsson W580i, and the Samsung M520 performing better in this area.

Cell Phone	Sony Ericsson W350	Nokia 5310	LG Chocolate 3
Score	5.04	4.26	3.82
Color Checker Chart

Cell Phone	Sony Ericsson W580i	Samsung Beat	Samsung M520
Score	5.61	4.72	5.45
Color Checker Chart

Noise (0.50)
The GretagMacbeth color chart is again the star of the show in evaluating the level of noise in a phone's camera. We take pictures of it with the phone's camera 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.

As is expected with any camera, the W350's noise levels increased as the lighting levels decreased. But the increase in noise was quite dramatic to the lowest lighting level tested from the previous level, well beyond what was seen with the comparison phones. If you expect to rely on your cell phone to take pictures in low light conditions often, the W350 will not be a good choice for you.

Live Preview (8.0)
The W350's live preview takes up most of the screen and represents accurately what will turn up on captured images in terms of framing - live previews that show more or less of what you're actually going to get in a picture are always annoying. With such a small screen, it's not easy to see the details of what you're trying to capture, but it does a good job adjusting to movement, showing only a moderate amount of artifacting with fast movement.

The W350's live preview

There are 2 bands across the top of the live preview, one of which provides hints on what buttons to use to adjust the brightness and zoom levels, and the other to show the storage location for pictures, the selected picture size, and the number of photos remaining given the amount of storage left. At the bottom of the screen is a band where the labels for the soft keys are shown - Capture and More. There's more than enough room to compress the information at the top of the screen into a single band to allow for more room to see the scene you're trying to frame, and this is our only complaint about the W350's live preview - anything to maximize what can be seen on its tiny screen would be welcome.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (5.55)
Many people use their cell phone's camera to capture things that interest them while they're out and about, and how easy this can be varies from phone to phone. To test this, we time how long it takes to capture a picture, starting with the phone in the closed standby mode, to replicate this common usage. On the W350, this took an average of 3.60 seconds, faster than the Nokia 5310 and Samsung Beat, but slower than our other comparison phones. 3.60 seconds is not a long time at all and this shouldn't cause most users in all but the most extreme must-capture-crazy-thing-happening circumstances any problems. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shot to Shot Time (16.38)
To see how quickly a phone's camera can take successive pictures, we time how long it takes to capture multiple images taken one right after another. If a phone's camera has burst mode, we enable it, and disable any post-capture preview, if possible. The W350 does have a burst mode, allowing it to take 4 pictures in quick succession, and we enabled this setting for this test. In this burst mode, automatic review of captured images does not occur, so this is not a factor with the W350 that affects the test's outcome.

The W350's burst mode is quite effective, allowing it to capture 4 successive images in 0.732 seconds, equaling 5.46 frames per second. This is an impressive score relative to all of our comparison phones, and to all of the phones we've ever tested, to boot. If you need to take pictures quickly one right after the other, the W350 will do you proud. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shutter to Shot Time (7.71)
The time it takes for a camera's shutter to activate to capture an image after the capture button is pressed varies from camera to camera. To test this, we time how long it takes to capture an image by starting a stopwatch at the moment we press the capture button, and the resulting picture of the stopwatch shows us the amount of time that elapsed until the picture was captured. As you'd expect from the W350's results in the Shot to Shot Time test, it didn't take the shutter long to capture an image at 0.26 seconds on average, though this wasn't quite quick enough to match some of our comparison phones, like the LG Chocolate 3 and Sony Ericsson W580i that each managed this in 0.12 seconds. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Interface (7.0)
The W350's camera interface is uncomplicated to use, requiring little, if any, reference to the user guide. The left soft menu key acts as the capture button, as does the center select button of the D-pad. The right soft menu key provides access to the various camera's settings, including burst mode, picture size, night mode, the self-timer, camera effects, white balance, and picture quality. Nothing confusing here at all and it's all easy to get to and is comparable to the camera interface on the Nokia 5310 in these respects.

The W350's camera interface

Photo Album Software Internal (4.0)
The Camera Album software is in the My Stuff folder in the main menu. Again, with such a small screen, looking through saved pictures on the W350 is not going to be easy on the eyes, but it will suffice to show off pictures quickly. Pictures can be browsed in several views - by list, thumbnail list, large thumbnail, which are exactly what you'd expect given their names, or in something called Timeline view. This view shows small thumbnails that are sorted by month or day, and toggling between month or day is as easy as pressing the right soft menu key. At the top of this view is a band showing the months so you know where you're at in the timeline and the thumbnails are shown in a 3 x 3 grid. This view is pretty neat, but is probably only really useful if you frequently take pictures with your phone and have a need to sort them them chronologically often. Plus, the thumbnails are tiny, making them hard to make out, particularly if you have a lot of similar images that are hard to differentiate from each other.

The W350's photo album software

It's possible to view pictures in a slide show, but you must first select a picture to view individually before the slide show option is shown in the More menu, which is a little unintuitive to get to. All pictures are shown by default, and if you want to eliminate pictures from the slide show, you must select them individually and click the Hide button using the right soft menu key. The slideshow is paused using the left soft menu key. There is no way to change the slide show interval.

Manual Control (2.0)
Most cell phone cameras offer little in the way of manual control, such as manual white balance adjustment and aperture priority settings. As you'd expect on such a basic phone, the W350 does not offer much here, including only a Night Mode to facilitate taking pictures in low lighting conditions, earning it 2 points.

Zoom (0.0)
Cell phone cameras sometimes include zoom, most often digital zoom rather than manual zoom. We award points for digital zoom, though accordingly fewer since it's not as effective as true optical zoom. The W350's camera offers digital zoom up to 4x though only when the picture size is set to 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 sizes. If you try to zoom when the picture size is set to the default 1-megapixel size, you'll see an error message asking you to select a smaller picture size first. When zoom is not available in the largest picture size on a phone's camera, we award no points to it in this area.

Focus (0.0)
The W350 has a fixed focus lens, for which it earns no points.

Flash (0.0)
The W350 does not have a flash.

Metering (0.0)
Metering settings can adjust how light in a scene is judged to adjust the exposure when an image is taken. This is more of an advanced option that is not offered in many cell phone's cameras, including the W350's.

White Balance (2.0)
White balance settings offer the ability to adjust how white is evaluated in a framed image to most accurately capture the scene. Some cell phone cameras offer modes to adjust between common lighting settings that affect how whites are capture, such as modes for incandescent, fluorescent, or bright daylight modes. The W350's camera has 5 preset modes - Automatic, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent, and Incandescent - for which it earns 2 points.

The W350's white balance presets

Image Handling (4.0)
In this section, we evaluate a phone's ability to edit photos right on the device. On the W350, photos can be rotated and copied or moved to another location, for which it earns 4 points.

Video Quality (0.0)
The W350 cannot record video, so it earns no points for this entire section.

Video Resolution (0.0)
Not applicable.

Video Compression (0.0)
Not applicable.

Interface (0.0)
Not applicable.

Manual Control (0.0)
Not applicable.

Zoom (0.0)
Not applicable.

Editing (0.0)
Not applicable.

Modes (0.0)
Not applicable.

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