Camera performance
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The Atom sports a two megapixel CMOS digital camera, capable of taking pictures at up to 1600x1200 resolution. It can also snap them at 1024x768, 640x480, 320x240 and 176x144. You now have the option of three quality levels: Normal, Better and Best. You can adjust the brightness and contrast of the picture on the fly between seven steps each, and pictures can be saved onto the internal memory or the miniSD card if you have one.
You can use up to 2x digital zoom on all resolutions. It’s not a lot, but proper photographers shouldn’t need to use it anyway. White balance is automatic and can’t be changed, and I couldn’t find any special effects settings either. There’s only a delay timer, flicker control and night mode functions as well as the flash LED. However, attempting to use night mode and the flash LED together would result in the PDA completely freezing and requiring a reset. More on this in the problems section.
It would seem that the camera application isn’t as advanced as previous O2 PDAs. The picture quality isn’t the best and doesn’t really compare to other phones already available on the market. In addition shutter speed is very slow. You’ll need to hold the Atom in place for several seconds while it saves the picture, before you can relax.
Videos can be recorded at QVGA resolution (320x240), but will only save at up to five frames per second. You can also choose 176x144 resolution and limit file sizes to send in an MMS. The microphone can also be activated and deactivated.