After reading about the massive compression the DInc has when shooting 8 megapixel pictures, I was wondering if it would ever be possible to be able to shoot without compression or in RAW format. Maybe sometime down the line with rooted devices? Do any other Android phones have this capability? N1 perhaps?
Why? The Incredible, just like every single phone in existence, has a craptacular camera. It is only made worse by the horrible decision to pack 8
mp into a almost microscopic sensor. I'd rather see 3 *good* megapixels rather than the crappy 8 that they gave us. The new iPhone did it right, and even though it is still a craptacular camera, it is less craptacular than everything else out there because they made those 5mp count.
Look, I take a lot of photos with my Incredible, a DSLR, and a point & shoot (
http://flickr.com/aaronbbrown)...if you want to take high quality shots with increased dynamic range (the main reason to shoot in RAW), a phone is not going to get it done.
(Yeah, I saw
http://fstoppers.com/iphone - funny video, and impressive work. That guy got some great results with a lot of lighting gear and a hot model, but you won't).
Can it be done? Probably. Somewhere in there, the camera is reading data off of the sensor. RAW is basically dumping that raw data into a format that a computer can understand. Chances are, it would be a camera app that writes DNG files.