Sample photos taken with Dell Streak rear camera
Although the Dell Streak's rear camera doesn't produce the finest video quality, it does a pretty nice job with still photos.
I've uploaded 24 unedited photos I took with the Streak to a photo set on Flickr. All the pictures were taken at the highest resolution and quality (2592 x 1944, fine quality) using the camera's default settings: automatic white balance and flicker adjustment, flash off, no zoom and brightness/contrast levels set at 0. The full-res images are grainy but the smaller versions look quite good. You can see some of them below, as well as find out more about the camera software.
All the photos in this post were taken with the Dell Streak.
In addition to the settings mentioned above, the camera also offers a multi-shot mode (four or nine shots), self-timer (2, 5, 10 seconds), and geotagging.
When I first started using the camera, I found it to be rather pleasant. Capturing shots can be done with the hardware button or the on-screen shutter button (choice is always nice), settings are easily accessed by tapping anywhere on the screen, and you can quickly switch between the front and rear cameras by pressing the Menu button.
As the day wore on, however, the camera app started to become unstable and wouldn't let me take photos unless I got out of it, went back in, switched to video mode, and then switched back to the camera. I don't know what caused this behavior but it still happens periodically and for seemingly no reason.
Reliability is an important feature of a camera, especially now that I have a baby girl, so I would feel very uncomfortable if I went somewhere and the Streak was the only camera I had with me.
Another thing that bothers me is the screen that appears after you take a photo. It can be very useful because it shows you a preview of the image you just took, gives you access to the photo/video app, and lets you share the pic (via Bluetooth printer, email, Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, Messaging, and Picasa), edit it (rotate & flip, crop, adjust colors, effects, frames, text, clipart, draw, and resize), set it as wallpaper or a contact icon, or delete it.
The problem is that it stays on screen for about 3 seconds [UPDATE: Pressing the Back button on the Streak will close the screen and go back to the viewfinder]. When you're just taking a quick pic here and there, a 3-second wait is no big deal. But if you want to take several shots of the same scene or just want to take a lot of photos, 3 seconds adds up and begins to feel like forever. The screen will sometimes take a while to appear, too, so the wait can be even longer.
Image quality at this size is pretty nice, though, right?
I'll continue to add photos to the Dell Streak photo set over the coming weeks and months, so please check there periodically if you want to see more examples of what the camera can do. If I run into anything particularly good or bad in the meantime, you'll find out about it here.
