The most poorly designed phone shutter releases are virtual touch screen buttons and the best are mechanical buttons perpendicular to the camera lens (the way DSLR cameras work).
Squeezing a shutter is always better than poking.
The HTC Incredible uses a mechanical (optical mouse button) on the same surface as the preview screen. This setup makes it difficult to take one hand photos, particularly photos stretched far away from your body.
The Motorola Droid’s choice of a mechanical button on the top right is my preference and goes along way in keeping the camera steady in low light situations.
The HTC Incredible has an amazing number of settings for still photos. Including brightness, contrast, sharpness, saturation, ISO, metering (centering, average, spot), self, timer, flash control and fun filters. The motorized auto-focus offers a user controllable focus spot. You tap the spot on screen you want the camera to focus.
The Motorola is far more basic with white balance, flash control, and a scene mode that changes several parameters.
For my testing I just put both cameras on full automatic, as they operate by default.
I was surprisingly underwhelmed by the HTC’s 8 megapixel camera in combination with the OLED screen. The Motorola Droid seems do a better job in capturing, color rendering and displaying.
What I like most about the Android philosophy is that there really isn’t a right or a wrong way to do things. Many different manufacturers create different hardware designs that suit different people.
The slower Motorola Droid can’t touch the HTC’s speedy processor for rendering everything. A better transition into phone dialing and answering. The sheer excitement of actually seeing web pages run Flash almost like big computers.
I’m looking forward into digging further into the HTC sense interface on the Incredible and seeing what else it offers.
I’m also excited to see what Motorola has in store with the Motorola Shadow due in a few months, the next development of the Droid that started it all for Verizon. It’s reported to have a larger megapixel camera and faster processor. It could be the perfect marriage.
