T-Mobile MyTouch 4G Slide Review - Photographers Wanted
by Vivek Gowri on August 12, 2011 8:45 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Snapdragon
- HTC
- 4G
- Mobile
- T-Mobile
- MyTouch
- Slide
And now we get to the good stuff. The MT4GS camera is one of the more highly touted smartphone shooters in recent memory, with features like zero-shutter lag, an f/2.2 aperture, built-in HDR, panorama, 5-shot bursts, 1080p video recording, and practically everything else including the kitchen and bathroom sinks included. We decided to do a bit of digging to figure out what really was going on, and naturally, took a ton of pictures in the process. 125 sample images later, I here’s what we learned.
Let’s start with the sensor. A bit of monkeying around in the kernel boot logs gets us a couple of model numbers without too much trouble. The first is Sony’s IMX105PQ, a 1/3.2” 8.13MP CMOS sensor with backside illuminated 1.4µm pixels and support for 1080p30. This sensor initialized successfully; it’s the one in our test unit. The second model number we got was Samsung’s S5K3H2YX, a 1/3.2” 8MP sensor also with 1.4µm backside illumination, 1080p30 and 720p60 support. It’s a new sensor, launched at MWC earlier this year, and it’s the successor to the Sensation’s S5K3H1GX sensor. The OS looked for this sensor on boot, so it’s likely the second sensor option. One of my friends bought a Slide this week, and we’ve been led to believe that it has the Samsung sensor onboard. There are some differences in image quality between the two, but not too many. Think of it like the panel lottery that’s common in notebook displays, except with cameraphones. Either way, what you’re getting here is a high-end 8MP, backside illuminated sensor with full 1080p30 recording support, all features that are basically mandatory for any serious cameraphone these days.
The Slide's optical system is F/2.2, which you can compare and contrast with the average smartphone’s F/2.8 (or worse) system. Aperture, in combination with shutter speed, controls how much light is exposed to the sensor. The lower the F/#, the larger the aperture and the higher the diameter of the lens opening. This gets you a greater depth of field and allows more light to reach the image sensor. In the case of the F/2.2, you’re looking at approximately 60% more light to the sensor when compared to F/2.8. Granted, the sensors we’re dealing with are tiny - the F/3.2” sensor size has a diagonal measurement of 5.68 millimeters and a crop factor of 7.61, but still, having a larger aperture does make a big difference.
Now here’s where stuff gets weird. This Zero Shutter Lag business is given with basically no substantiation on T-Mobile’s website, but their press release gives a bit of detail on what it is.
Zero Shutter lag: The myTouch 4G Slide is the only cameraphone on the market with Zero Shutter lag technology. When a customer opens the camera application, the camera begins recording in the background in a memory buffer. When you snap the camera button, rather than waiting for a mechanical shutter, it looks at the timestamp of when you pressed the button and pulls the photo from the cache. Thus, there is no delay between pressing that button and grabbing that perfect shot.
Uhhh....okay then.
It turns out that this is a feature that Qualcomm showed off at Computex in June and was developed by Scalado, a Swedish company that specializes in mobile imaging solutions. Scalado’s Camera Framework is built into the MSM8x60 line of application processors, so it makes sense that this is one of the first implementations of the technology. More digging suggests that this entire thing is enabled by using Scalado’s SpeedTags JPEG optimization codec for 15 fps hi-res image decoding to push a stream of full-resolution JPEG images from the camera sensor to the processor and stored in a cyclic buffer. The stream of images is then displayed by the camera application as the on-screen image preview. SpeedTags data includes a timestamp on each image, so whenever the shutter mechanism is triggered, whether by the physical camera button or the onscreen button, it instantly pulls the image with that timestamp out of the stream. Until I figured out why, I was a bit disappointed in the relatively low framerate of the preview image, but it’s actually a rather impressive bit of technology.
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FrederickL - Saturday, August 13, 2011 - link
@Vivek Gowri
Very informative review. With regard to your experience with the 2G I think that the problem may have been that the first shipments of the Desire Z (2G) did indeed have a problem with the construction of that hinge. As far as I can tell (from what I read on various fora at the time) the problem appeared to be largely cured with succeeding shipments. I have had a Desire Z for about half a year now and although the hinge-action has an unusual "feel" to it because of the structural design I have in fact not had any problems with it at all. The disappointment you experienced may be due to the fact that you were an uber early adopter of that phone!
-:)
Frederick
FrederickL - Saturday, August 13, 2011 - link
@Vivek Gown
Another thought just struck me looking at your battery life tests (although I know that this is somewhat off topic). If Nokia manage to produce a WP7 phone with something like the N8's build quality, the camera *and* bring their traditional strengths in call quality and battery life to the table (I am thinking that nobody yet gets seriously near the iPhone's battery life) then they *may* prove the doomsayers wrong. Furthermore if they brought those qualities to one of their classic slider packages I think that even a gentleman like yourself who perhaps feels a touch jaded after seeing so many phones might feel pleased! -:)
VivekGowri - Saturday, August 13, 2011 - link
I definitely agree about the G2 - I went through two in the first week, and they both felt like crap. The later hardware revisions I played with at the T-Mobile store were definitely better, but they still weren't what I would call "confidence-inspiring". I'm comfortable with my decision to sell when I did, but man was that a brilliantly functional phone for it's day.The Nokia WP7 lineup has me so ridiculously excited, you have no idea. I'm an out-and-out Nokia hardware fanboy who has loathed Symbian since the N95 started to get long in the tooth. The first Nokia WP7 device (Sea Ray, the one that looks like the N9) is gonna be bomb, and if they do one like the E7 or the MeeGo slider phone (rumoured to be the N9 back in the day, don't remember the official name off the top of my head), I'll be basically thrilled. I've been using Mango on my HD7 recently, I'm pretty psyched to see it paired with Nokia's brilliant HW design.
dlochinski - Sunday, August 14, 2011 - link
You actually can buy a spring for the g2, (rather cheap and rather strong) and replace the spring inside the g2, then voila, no issues! It is rather unfortunate that it had problems in the beginning, but it is a good phone beyond that.FrederickL - Sunday, August 14, 2011 - link
@Vivek Gowri
Indeed. I currently run my "Z" as my primary and my dear old "Wildfire" as my backup. I will be looking to upgrade my main phone in about a year and as far as I can see my likely choices will be between HTC's then current Android slider and whatever Nokia has presented as its high end WP7 slider. My good lady runs an N8 and as far as the hardware is concerned she loves it but as far as the os is concerned she uses language that would make a Navy Seal blush! I would certainly be looking in about a year (we have an important anniversary coming up) at whatever is then Nokia's flagship cameraphone. All in all the coming year bodes well for choice of good kit in the marketplace. I look forward to it.
Johnmcl7 - Saturday, August 13, 2011 - link
This is the wrong way round:"The lower the F/#, the larger the aperture and the higher the diameter of the lens opening. This gets you a greater depth of field and allows more light to reach the image sensor"
As you widen the aperture the depth of field is reduced, not increased although perhaps that's just the way I read 'greater' to mean deeper depth of field. Either way on such a small focal length the slightly increased aperture isn't really going to have a noticeable effect on depth of field which is going to be very deep anyway.
Thanks for the review although frustratingly while there were rumours of this phone being released in Europe as the HTC Doubleshot (the G2 was released as the Desire Z with Sense intact) I can't see any sign of it on preorder lists so like the Droid 3 it looks like it's not going to be sold here. Which is particularly frustrating given there's no other high end qwerty sliders after the Desire Z.
John
anandtech pirate - Saturday, August 13, 2011 - link
It looks like HTC needs to stop being cheap on the internal storage. 4GB when the standard now is at least 8gb to 16gb.bplewis24 - Saturday, August 13, 2011 - link
Completely agree with the Custom UI rant you threw in there. I hope more reviewers keep harping on it.The Moto D1 had a dedicated camera button that could be long-pressed to open the camera application, so I don't think HTC was copying MS on that one.
Lastly, great review as always. AT is the go-to site for smartphone reviews now. I can't tell you guys how many times I have debunked irrational and subjective criticisms of specific phone/hardware with objective analysis and evidence from these reviews.
VivekGowri - Saturday, August 13, 2011 - link
Yeah, I guess I didn't mean that they were copying Microsoft, but the idea was definitely marketed pretty heavily by the WP7 devices. HTC has put out enough WP7 devices in the last year that taking that feature to Android seems pretty logical.Bristecom - Saturday, August 13, 2011 - link
Good find on the use of two different CMOS sensors. I'd be very interested to see some direct comparison shots and video - particularly in low lighting. I hope you can figure out what sensor the Samsung Galaxy S II uses, although I'm pretty sure it's the S5K3H2.