Taken w/ Camera 360 app on a Motorola Droid 2.

Bought a Motorola Droid 2 smartphone the other day. I had lost my prior phone sometime last week while on an outing with the fam, so a new one was in order. Good timing on my part, actually – my contract had run it’s course as of June, so an upgrade was due anyhow. To be honest, I was holding out for the rumor to come true Verizon was going to get the iPhone soon, but since it’s just a rumor and I needed a phone now, I opted for the Droid 2. Now, why the Droid 2? Simple really, I didn’t want to have to special order a Droid X, plus aside from the form factor, somewhat larger screen and memory, and better camera, they’re really not that different.

So how do I like it? Not bad actually. It works smoothly, has a nice screen, good audio, and the slide-out keyboard is very handy. Phone calls come in clear and sound good, and no dropped calls etc. so far to date. I will say though, that compared to my iPad, which runs iOS like the iPhone, the Droid is a bit kludgy. While some people will like all the customization that you can do with the Droid, personally, I find it can be a bit busy and somewhat overkill. With the iPad, it was just pull it out of the box, fire it up, and away you go – the interface was very easy and intuitive to pickup quickly, and within minutes I was finding and downloading apps, setting up my mail, bookmarks, etc., and having a grand ole’ time. With the Droid, it took much longer to set all the prefs, setup accounts, erase bloatware, download apps, and get the phone to where I was comfortable with it. It’s not that it was difficult, but for all the extra effort, it really doesn’t have enough advantages to me over iOS to say it was worth the extra time. I also find that the lack of regulation for Droid apps has its effects in that the apps for Droid seem not quite as polished as the iOS ones, there’s MUCH more crap apps to sort through, and there’s more of a scammy feel to them that’s missing from the iOS apps. Oh, and someone should tell Droid developers that free doesn’t mean that you have to dump a lot of shit ads onto my phone to offset your costs. I have many free apps for my iPad that are just that, with no strings attached and often of quality equal or better than some of the paid  apps. Anyway, that’s my take on it – it’s a good phone and I like it, but I’d prefer an iPhone because the apps and user experience are better I think. If/when Verizon gets iPhones, I will likely trade over without to much hesitation.

So what does this have to do with photography? well, the Droid’s got a camera built in, and there’s some nifty camera apps available, so naturally I had to download a few and give them a whirl. One thing to make clear though, the Droid camera is the suxor; it really blows. At 5mp, you’d think it’d be pretty decent, but you’d be wrong. Even at base ISO, it’s so noisy that the NR wipes almost all the small detail into oblivion, and renders most scenes with a watercolor-esque feel that precludes their use for any kind of quality work. None of the cam apps I’ve found so far offer a RAW feature or a way to control the NR, so you’re stuck pretty much. Color is good though, and contrast too, so for small prints it’s probably fine, but anything more is sketchy. With that in mind, I went for the Lomo/vintage type cam apps which can hide a bit of that due to the lo-fi effect, and in that way, the camera becomes pretty usable. I have Retro Camera+ and Camera 360, and so far am quite happy with the results. If you have an Android-based phone, they’re worth checking out.

Here’s some more samples for you from the first few days I’ve had it. These are with Retro Camera+: