Motorola Droid phone: camera review with image examples

Last weekend I’ve got a new toy, a replacement for my old Blackberry Strom: Droid from Motorola, Verizon call it iPhone killer. Well, I did not have iPhone, so can’t tell if it is really a killer, but so far I like it! Much more freedom in applications and customizing compare to BB Storm. When i power it up, it looked with the red eye and said: “Drrrooidd” to me. Like my old cat use to do:-)

Here it is, with shell case from Motorola. There are so many photos of it naked, and I like it more this way :-) I’ve paid $29 for the case, but later found it on Amazon for $15: Motorola A855 Droid Verizon Original OEM Belt Clip Shell / Holster

droid moto from verizon phone keyboard open

Motorola Droid from verizon phone keyboard open

Motorola Droid pda keyboard closed

First of all, this is almost tablet PC: 850x480px screen resolution! I can browse internet for real now. There are so many things you may like in this phone, but I’ll stick with photography-related stuff:-)

Now I am going to test built-in 5 Mpx camera to see if i can use it at least for a family album snapshots.
First, auto focus. As expected, it works, but object you are trying to focus on should be close enough to cover not less 50% of the screen:

Droind photo with close object in focus

As you can see, white balance was shifted to higher kelvin numbers because of the orange.. yes, it was orange color. This is raw image form a phone, no noise suppression or sharping was applied.

100% crop:

Droid from Verizon 100% crop closeup image test example

When I’ve moved orange slightly away, so it will be less than 50% of sensor coverage, and white balance get corrected along with the focus, making orange look good but blurry:

Motorola droid image sample close-up out focus

One more example on exposure evaluation and metering, worked very well:

Droid image sample exposure metering

Now outside, where this phone camera is suppose to be used, now I did some noise fix in Photo Shop:

Motorola Droid street test image sample

100% from above photo:

Motorola Droid street test image sample, 100% crop

Not bad for a PDA camera, what do you think?

Several more images:

Example image from Motorola Droid phone, close-up macro

100% crop:

100 % crop from motorola droid phone macro close-up

Blue sky, few days before:

Example photo from Verizon Droid phone , blue sky

I had a product photo shoot the same day i wrote this post, lighting setup was ready and it was easy to snap few more studio-made images of the Droid:

Side view, Droid by Motorla

Side view with keyboard closed, Droid by Motorola

The video is really good, better than you can expect from such small camera. Below the sample I’ve took and processed with Sony Vegas studio:

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Now I am looking for some useful applications for the phone. If you know something interesting, please let me know :-)