BasicDog

One of the major selling points of modern phones is that they feature cameras, and following my review of the HTC Touch Dual I hope to detail how it performs when taking pictures. Having a camera on your phone can be very handy and would be sorely missed if there wasn't one, though until recently they were seriously lacking in the features we have become accustomed to with digital cameras. Mobile phone manufacturers keep coming up with more and more innovative ways to make phone cameras a more viable alternative to carrying both a phone and camera, let's see what HTC have done with the Touch Dual...

The Touch Dual features a second camera on the screen side of the phone for video calls, a duty that it performs very well indeed. Though if you are thinking of using this 0.5Mega Pixel camera for taking photographs with, you will quickly discover the futility of that idea.

Photo performance
The phone does not feature any kind of flash or LED solution for taking pictures in low light environments such as clubs, and this as with must digital cameras leaves the images blurry and off colour.

I could sit here all day trying to describe how the quality of the pictures vary at each resolution and level of zoom, but I thought I would save us all the time and effort and show you so you can make up your own minds. I have taken pictures at both 1MP and 2MP with different levels of zoom on the 1MP quality. For full size versions of the pictures below simply click them and they will open in a new window.

2MP, no zoom

Resolution: 1600x1200
Size: 529KB

1MP, no zoom

Resolution: 1280x960
Size: 346KB

1MP, 1.6x zoom

Resolution: 1280x960
Size: 319KB

1MP, 2x zoom

Resolution: 1280x960
Size: 304KB

Features
We have covered the quality of the pictures the camera can take, so now I will move on to the features:

Photo: Captures standard still images
Video: Captures video with sound
MMS Video: Captures video for sending via MMS
Contacts Picture: Assign the picture to contacts
Picture Theme: Chose novelty themed picture frames for photos
Panorama: Take three pictures and merge the edges to get a panoramic photo
Sports: Captures consecutive photos
Burst: Captures sequences of photos for as long as the button is held

While some of these features are simply for novelty value (Picture Theme), the others like the Panoramamode work well. This mode displays the side of the last image on the left of the screen to line up the next perfectly, it also fades the two images together for a cleaner seemless result.

Pros:
Full 2.6 inch screen as a viewfinder
Panoramic picture feature
Video recording mode with sound
Second camera for video calls

Cons:
Only a 2MP camera
No flash or LED light
No optical zoom
Can only zoom when in 1MP mode
Poor quality in low light environments

Conclusion
It is safe to say that the camera on the Touch Dual is not it's best feature, though I have owned a far worse cheap 5 mega pixel camera before. While avid digital camera users will want to carry a camera as well as this phone, those of us that are happy with sharp close up pictures without the hassle of carrying a second device will appreciate HTCs camera addition.