I have used the iPhone, Droid incredible, and now the Droid thunderbolt. The picture quality surpasses the iPhone 4 by far. It has a mechanical shutter for faster capture, 8 mp with several settings for personal pleasure including exposure. There is no comparing the two. The thunderbolt is in a total different class. I don't think sitting at best buy looking over the phone and taking 2 pix qualifies for an "educated" opinion. For those needing a true opinion the thunderbolt takes amazing pictures. Very quickly too, because of the mechanical shutter. It is by far the nicest camera for those interested in quality, quick snap shots with a good amount of customizable options.
That's strange. My wife is a photographer at a professional level who went from the iPhone4 to the Thunderbolt and she's very disappointed in the TBolt's camera quality. She can't carry her big equipment with her everywhere so she likes to have a good camera phone for random stuff and outings with the kids.
Her complaints are:
-The shutter response time from shoot is way longer compared to the ip4 making it much harder to capture timed shots
-The images colors aren't as "true" and have a bad yellow tint requiring more editing if she wants to do more than just send it via text
-There is no exposure adjustment. With the ip4, you can calibrate it by clicking on a darker spot which immediately adjusts exposure on the fly.
I didn't buy it and assumed there had to be adjustments to fix all these things, but we went through it and compared and she was totally right. Now I feel bad for talking her into the TBolt.
Also, on a side note, when sending images via texting, when she was on AT&T, the pictures were much better, VZ compresses it poorly. I've compared it as well and confirmed. Trust me, I didn't want to believe any of it after talking this phone up, but she totally proved every point to me with the phones side by side shooting and texting pictures.
Don't get me wrong, this phone rocks (IMO), but camera quality does NOT pass the iPhone4, unfortunately.