9. Cameras Compared

A feature phone with this size of screen would have a matching high-megapixel camera. Given the cost of the processors that go into smart phones, the camera is usually seen as a way of keeping the price down rather than showing off the screen and both phones here have three megapixel cameras (unlike the five megapixel camera on the HTC Touch Diamond 2).

The TG01 gets points for having a dedicated camera button, but you have to press and hold it for so long that it’s no slower to press the home screen button on the Touch Pro2 and tap the Camera button on screen.

Neither phone has a flash. The TG01 has a zoom option, but only if you reduce the image quality, and that’s the only setting you can change apart from turning on the timer or switching to nine-shot "burst mode." The Auto Focus option is confusing—it seems to work all the time but you have to turn it on to see whether it’s able to focus and the indicator is at the side of the screen rather than in the image. You can crop, rotate, or auto-correct images on both phones, but only by going into the standard Windows Mobile Pictures and Video tool. The TG01 puts the link on the live camera screen, while the Touch Pro2 puts it with the options to email or delete the snap you've just taken.

Autofocus on the Touch Pro2 is simpler—you can choose whether to just point and shoot or to tap on the screen to choose what to focus on. It also has a lot more options, including setting brightness and white balance, tuning sharpening and contrast (which will need reducing from the high default settings), and creating panoramas. There’s even a setting to take pictures to associate with your email addresses.

Using the default settings, image quality is broadly similar. To compare, we took the same shots with both cameras and with a Casio EXILIM FC100 set on automatic. Colors are a little more vivid with the TG01, but detail is crisper with the Touch Pro2, especially for close-up shots, and if you take the time to adjust the white balance, colors are more accurate. With no macro setting, you can still get clear shots close up with the Touch Pro2, while the TG01 can’t focus down as far. The main problem with the Touch Pro2 is that some highlights in bright outdoor images get bleached out.

The TG01 (left) loses detail in the highlights, and doesn’t capture as much fine detail in close shots, while the colors in the Touch Pro2 shot (center) are also more accurate.

The Touch Pro2 (center) also does better at photographing text, producing a much crisper image than the TG01 (left) does with less reflection.

However, the TG01 copes much better with bright sunlight, while the Touch Pro2 tends to produce a slightly bleached and overexposed image. It’s easier to choose what to focus on with the Touch Pro2, and Autofocus does better at focusing on objects closer to the camera.

The Touch Pro2 (center) doesn’t cope as well with the bright light, but the TG01 (left) focuses past the plant and on the brick wall.

For video, the Touch Pro2 gives you the option of using the main camera to record what you see or the VGA camera (used in Europe for video calling) to record yourself. The video quality isn’t fantastic on either phone. The TG01 produces a slightly crisper image with better color balance, but it suffers badly from motion artifacts and clips seem to be limited to 15 seconds, while footage from the Touch Pro2 is softer but also smoother.

The TG01 takes advantage of the 1GHz processor to let you edit videos—you can include photos, video clips, effects, and text captions; set transitions between clips; and save the whole thing as an MP4. It’s a handy little tool and produces better results than what you might expect.