Review: BlackBerry 9800 Torch
Photos
With a 5-megapixel camera and flash, you might be fooled into thinking that the Torch has a good camera. You'd be mostly right. The Torch handles aspects such as white balance, color representation, and exposure as well as any other cameraphone. Images had vibrant and rich colors, and the Torch appropriately accounted to whatever type of lighting was available. It had some problems here and there, with whites being blown out a few times, but mostly it did OK. The real problem, in my book, is the presence of grain. Even those images which appear to be perfectly in focus in well-lit areas had grain or some digital noise. This is a shame, as it really holds the Torch back a bit.
Still, my guess is the average user will be mostly pleased with the Torch's photo capabilities. More advanced users will have better results if they make use of the extensive shooting modes, and take care to use the flash appropriately. I would have no qualms about sharing photos captured with the Torch via email, Facebook, Flickr, etc.
Video
As with the pictures, color, exposure, and white balance is pretty much spot-on with the Torch's video capturing capability. The one bummer is that motion isn't smooth. You'll notice that as I pan back and forth (slowly, I might ad), there's some herky-jerky stuttering. Other than that, the Torch did a fairly good job. It even reacted well to a drastic change in light. The videos captured with the Torch will certainly be Facebook and maybe even YouTube worthy.
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BlackBerry Torch 9800
