Nice test, and I appreciate the effort.
At first, I found the Evo to be terrible for still photos, despite a great thread of great snaps to the contrary. I then decided to turn off auto, set a constant ISO (typically 200, sometimes 100 or 400), definitely check White Balance and adjust as needed - but certainly to adjust Contrast, Brightness and Saturation - and Sharpness.
I haven't played with the video yet, but
reemas' shots have certainly inspired me to give it a try. At VGA resolution, I'd intuitively expect the smart move would be to turn the Sharpness all the way down - meaning, no additional processing. The camera's wasting time doing that and then having to do frame compression with whatever's left over.
If you play with the two cameras in the Evo, you'll find that for nearfield - meaning, even beyond arm's length a little bit - the front camera is MUCH sharper. I think that's a natural side effect of the much smaller aperture of the front lens, but I was very surprised because while that rule of thumb holds true for film cameras, with digital cameras sharpness and detail are very much influenced by the light going to each pixel - while the back camera has over 6 times the points to distribute light to, it does seem to have a disproportionately larger aperture with which to accomplish that.
In color work, whether still photo or video, believe it or not, seeing detail comes from contrast first, resolution last - color/chroma and saturation even come before resolution. Lots of newcomers to HDTV find this counterintuitive, but it's quite true. Pop up the photos in this link, set them all to the same size, do a side-by-side comparison and see for yourself:
Colorfulness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
With the cameras appropriately adjusted (both Evo and iPhone), I wonder if the shoot-out results would be materially different?
I also wonder if the camera's processes are in any way prioritized in the Evo, or if it's having to fight with other running processes for CPU resources. Hopefully so, because that could portend a software fix.
I'm not holding my breath on HTC doing anything about this. They're marketing numbers - try telling them you have some negative metrics against an iPhone, and I'd be surprised if you got anyone that cared the way you may want.
Apple knew that everything about the iPhone would be under scrutiny and skepticism - remember the days before the unveiling? Remember what Steve-o said the target market was in the keynote address? I sure do. So the iPhone wasn't designed by walking down the parts aisle with a checklist against what the other phones in the line had - each component, hardware or software - were targeted to catch an untapped segment of the smartphone market.
When you add up the leading edge work Apple has always done with video-related work (the QuickTime engine, Firewire, ... a long list! ...) and the fact that their phone has gone through refinement to sell one model only - and compare that to any other typical phone manufacturer like HTC, the expectations become obvious.
Scaling and video compression algorithms can be committed to a single off-the-shelf chip. If that's how the camera is being handled in the HTC, then its video woes for scaling and compression will not be fixable by any sort of update. If it's being handled by software/firmware - those algorithms are proprietary (read: they were purchased) so HTC won't be replacing them for free. (Again, we go back to the Apple model of focused development: they've had superior scaling and compression algorithms within their purview for a great many years as anyone using a Mac mini for a home theater PC, outputting vid via DVI to 720p/60Hz, 1080p/24Hz or 1080p/60Hz can attest, as can the owners of any Apple TVs.)
Well Ser reemas, I hope you're satisfied. It wasn't as if I didn't have enough to do already with my phone, now I have to go play with the video!
PS - If anyone's skimming, and my post is TLDR, maybe you'll notice this PS. It says to go back and read SporkLover's last post (#50) on the previous page.
- True words.
