HTC HD2 vs iPhone 3GS: Pictures in low light
November 14th, 2009 | 
Author: While we have both an iPhone 3GS and a HTC HD2 in the house I felt a few more low light pictures were in order.
In response to some demand this time I will include some pictures taken without using the full features of the HD2, but it bears remembering the extremely powerful flash makes pictures in complete darkness possible, and will likely make the difference in the evening of getting acceptable pictures from the HD2 vs unusable pictures from the iPhone.
HTC HD2 with flash 
HTC HD2 with flash disabled
iPhone 3GS
Looking at the pictures I notice the iPhone 3GS picture is quite bright, at the expense of a lot of noise, as can be seen on the wall. The HD2 pictures sans flash are less bright, but this can easily corrected in Photoshop, and similarly leads to an increased level of noise. In the end the higher brightness on the iPhone does not rescue the picture from being too dark to distinguish the features from our little kitten Mimi, and the best results come from casting more literal light on the subject itself.
For comparison, the pictures below are from my old Pentax 6 megapixel point and shoot camera.
With flash
Without flash
The picture without flash actually looks pretty nice, but due to the long expose times blurring is inevitable.
When one looks at the subject of the picture, the HTC HD2’s picture with flash probably looks as good as the Pentax’s, at least for web work.
Do our readers agree? Let us know in the comments.
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They all seem pretty poor IMO.
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Is there an outdoor video comparison between HD2 and 3GS?
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The HD2 with flash looks a little blue and dark compared to the pentax. I'm happy with the HD2's camera though. all i need it for is reading bar codes, and taking pictures/videos for notes. I do hope that HTC improve on camera quality in the future though. it will get more important over time as we expect more from our phones.
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patiently waiting Reply:
November 15th, 2009 at 1:58 am
I'm not gonna lie, that's a pretty cool cat (he he) you have there.
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Keith Reply:
November 15th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Led's tend to produce a more blue light than more conventional xenon flash units which i would presume the Pentax has.
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Foamy Reply:
November 15th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
I thought that must be the reason. Do you know why they went for LED instead of xenon? I'm thinking it must be either cost or size.
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Keith Reply:
November 15th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
There probably a bit bigger but also i dare say they draw more power than an led. I used to have an old g800 (5mp Xenon flash and optical zoom) and to be fair that was rubbish in the dark. despite a xenon flash it just didnt travel very far where as my n95 with led flash was great.
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drphysx Reply:
November 15th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Xenon draws lots of power, but the biggest problem with Xenon is that the handset would have to be at least 14mm thick.
Imagine a handset the size of the HD2 but 3-6mm thicker…
Dude your cat is awesome… is it female? Looks so tiny!
These pictures all look pretty bad, even the one from your Pentax P&S. :S
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These HD2 pictures are good enough for a phone and acceptable for the general public (99% of them)
But for photo afficionados it's a negligence that HTC didn't put a better camera in a FLAGSHIP product.
As smartphone, I still love it. I would pick up any other phone.
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l3v5y Reply:
November 15th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
For aficionados, they'll likely have a fairly good camera with them most of the time so it probably won't matter that much.
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So basically the iphone uses a higher ISO setting which ofcourse leads to drastic noise. With a little bit of brightness/contrast editing you can make the one from HD2 as bright as the one from the iphone and still have much less noise (I actually tried it with Vista's bulit-in photo adjustment features)
And ofcourse HD2 creates 5 megapixel photos. So I think we can conclude that HD2 has a generally better camera.
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BTW I also have a black and white cat (although he is a little older at 2 1/2), a chocolate leather sofa and magnolia walls. We have the same taste lol
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Yes we all know Iphone SUCKS!
1.) Has who wants a Iphone which the battery is welded in and can not replace battery for a newer charged battery. Great what happens if I am middle of nowhere or trap in a elevator and my stupid Iphone battery dies out on me. What than? Yup you guess it I should have gotten a Windows Phone has all Windows Phone battery can be swap anytime
2.) Iphone storage you can't expand further for more space due to the Iphone storage space is internal only. It does not even have a MicroSD external card to expand. Again what a Junk Iphone is. Windows Phones has mostly all MicroSD card built into the phone and can expand up to 2, 8, 16, 32, 64 Gig of storage space. Best part is MicroSD cards are more affortable. So yes Windows Phone Wins Again.
3.) Iphone does not have Flash base capabilities to view 90% of flash websites out there on the Web. What a another joke has why get a Iphone if it will not be compatible with Flash base websites. Iphone also does not have Java, and video streaming capabilities. So Windows Phone wins again has all windows phone have Flash built into the phone and also Java capabilities.
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4) Iphone can open many apps at once. You have to use there stupid waste of time Jailbreak software which sounds like a illegal software hahaha… Windows phones dont need to jailbreak which it will open many apps up to 15 or 20 apps at once without crashing. That the power of Windows phone.
5) Iphone is just a App phone and nice looking phone is all the Iphone is all about. Windows phone are good for performance, Apps and personal and business use. it has all the important features before Iphone finally gotten copy & paste and video recording features. So how long will Iphone get another basic feature to add? why Windows phone has it already for 4yrs now.
I can go on and on… and trust me I do not want to has it proves Iphone is a Junk phone. I wonder how many Iphone fanboys Iphone exploded yet hahahaha read this Article on Iphone exploding everywhere. Yup like I said a total Junk Iphone.
Exploding Iphone Article: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Expl...
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