I took out the iPhone / T-Mobile Wing / HTC TyTN II for the past weeks to take pictures of my dog. Since my dog is very active, he was so excited whenever he is out of his kennal. A good snap shot camera is definitely needed to take the picture of him. And the camera on your cell phone / Smartphone will be your snap shot camera too. Look at the above 3 pictures, they were taken by the iPhone, Wing and the TyTN. Before you read the following, let's guess which is taken by which.
First the specs.:
iPhone: 2MP camera, no manual adjustment can be changed. "Fooly" no..no... "FULLY Automatic".
T-Mobile Wing: 2MP camera, white balance and other basic adjustment. "Semi-Automatic".
HTC TyTN II: 3MP camera, Auto focus, white balance and other basic adjustment. "Advanced Semi-Automatic".
Pictures by iPhone:
When I start taking picture with the iPhone, the whole screen turned into a view finder with just a single "capture" button on the screen. It doesn't have any adjustment that you can make. However, the iPhone really doing a great job on balancing and focusing. I don't really need to worry about adjusting anything. What you see, what you get !! Nice snap shot camera. Look at the above pictures, you will not see any out focus, no yellowish... good quality pictures.
Pictures by T-Mobile Wing:
The above pictures were taken by the Wing. On for the first 2 pictures, it shows a lot of yellowish on the picture. I tried some many different shots, but the outcome is still yellowish. Luckily, for the Wing, there is a white balance adjustment on screen. I can adjust the white balance by tapping the white balance to what I need. Unlike the iPhone, the Wing has a good on screen manual that give you a short cut on the minor adjustment and also it gives you the count down on how many pictures can take with the remaining memory. It also have a few different mode that you can choose, sports mode, night mode, etc. However, the focus is still not as good as the iPhone.
Pictures by HTC TyTN II (AT&T Tilt, Kaiser):
Yes!! The above are the pictures that taken by the HTC TyTN II. Although it has a 3 MP quality camera, the auto focus is a nightmare when using it. It has a 2-3 second delay on the auto focus. "Click" --> "[Geez... Geez..] --> "Capture". When I was taking the pictures, this feature is killing me. I can't never take a good snap shot. This auto focus cannot be manually disabled. Therefore, you will have to take extra 2-3 second to take one snap shot and in most of the cases, whatever you take will be gone.... just like my pictures. I remember when I did the first review for the Wing, people are asking me why it is not equiped with the auto focus. Here it is, but what's the point????
Overall:
Back from the top, the pictures that shown were taken by "iPhone", "Wing" and TyTN II starting from the left. iPhone shows me a much better quality when taking a snapshot with it. However, this test is only for indoor snapshot. We may see a lot of different when the pictures are taken from outside. But still, the auto focus feature is a killer for the snapshot purpose. You may want to save this TyTN II to take a portrait or something. But definitely not snapshot. That's maybe the reason AT&T is carrying the non-camera version of the TyTNII as one of their lineup.