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Comment by djahng | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what he's complaining about with the Droid camera. It looks like it's just using a different white-balance setting than the iPhone.

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I don't think he was complaining about the quality (although for a 3+ MP advantage I wouldn't be proud of those shots).

To my eyes… they’re roughly the same quality once taken. And if I’m not mistaken the 1st gen iphone is a 2.0 megapixel camera and the droid is 5 megapixels. Yeesh that’s embarrassing.

Reports have complained that the Droids camera takes ages to open, shoot, and process. I'll bet that's what he meant when he said it really sucks. That would make sense, given that the device must process a lot more to take in all 5MP. Hopefully they'll refine this process in the future for faster shots.

Is there any hope that someday people will stop to think that more Mpx is more quality? It's just bigger size, that's all. And if more Mpx are crammed on the sensor of the same size, that usually means more noise too.

Right but you get better quality in two scenarios:

1) take two pictures of the same size yields a better result with more megapixels

2) taking a larger sized picture on a camera with more megapixels and scaling it down yields a better result than taking a picture at the scaled down dimensions with a lower megapixel camera

I don't think so. A high noise shot scaled down still will have a bunch of noise in it. Double the pixel sensor size and you get a much better picture, in my experience.

For example: HD video cameras. They look like crap in the dark, even at YouTube dimentions. My Flip video SD beats them hands down.

I don't think we'll see the end of it any time soon. It's marketing. People have been told that more MP = better. It's really only professionals who know that there is much more depth to digital camera quality.

+1 you got it.

The issue is that the phone is apparently not auto-focusing properly. When you take a shot you'll often see red markers in the corners, which supposedly indicate that the camera couldn't focus (you're supposed to see green, at least according to some forums I've read — I see red every time). Rumored to just be a software problem that will be fixed in the next few weeks.

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