Camera Phone Reviews

Cingular 8525

Cingular 8525 Reviews

CNET reviews the Cingular 8525 and writes, "The 8525 features an upgraded camera over its predecessor. While the Cingular 8125 sported a 1.3-megapixel lens, the 8525 bumps it up to 2 megapixels and offers eight capture modes: photo, video, MMS video, contacts picture, picture theme, panorama, sports, and burst. For still images, you can take photos in several resolutions, ranging from 160x120 to 1,600x1,200, and four quality settings (basic, normal, fine, and super fine). You also get an 8X zoom (though not available for all resolutions), a self-timer, various effects, and white balance and saturation settings. ... We are more impressed with the photo quality as the images boasted sharp lines and bright colors. We also like the fact Cingular offers a cameraless version of the 8525, since more and more businesses are prohibiting the use of camera phones for security reasons."

PCMag reviews the Cingular 8525 and writes, "The 8525's 2-megapixel camera isn't great, but at least it's higher-res than previous models. It has a macro switch and a weak LED flash, and takes pretty dark photos with some visible compression artifacting, or dark, wobbly 320 by 240 videos at 15 frames per second."

Infosync reviews the Cingular 8525 and writes, "The phone includes a microSD slot, conveniently located on the side of the device, as well as a 2-megapixel camera. The camera was average for a phone, with no autofocus, though it does include an LED flash. Video quality was also average, though we would have liked to see VGA recording for the 8525 to be competitive with upcoming Nokia N-series devices. The mobile Internet Explorer handled every Web page we threw at it, including the lengthy New York Times home page. Browsing performance was fast over HSDPA and Wi-Fi; in fact, HSDPA performance was even better than 802.11g. "

MobileTechReview reviews the Cingular 8525 and writes, "How we've waited to say this about a smartphone camera-- it's quite good. Feature phones and Nokia smartphones have beaten the pants off of PDA and smartphone cameras, but the Cingular 8525 and TyTN's 2 megapixel camera is quite good. The photos have very nice color, good contrast, low noise in decent to well lit locations, but the images are overly processed with a lot of sharpening. We were surprised that it edged out the 2MP Nokia N91 and E70 given Nokia's excellent 2 to 3 megapixel cameras. While well-lit outdoor shots were sometimes a draw (the Nokia having too little sharpening and the 8525 having a bit too much), the 8525 really pulls ahead for indoor and low light shots. ... Video quality is just average with some loss of sync at higher resolutions and blockiness."

PDAStreet reviews the Cingular 8525 and writes, "Shutterbugs will appreciate the 8525's 2 megapixel camera, a step up from the 1.3 megapixel camera found in the 8125. The 8525's camera includes both a self-portrait mirror and a flash, and has a lens you can manually switch between normal and close-up modes. The 8525 took decent photos, and you can also record CIF-sized (352 x 288) videos with the phone. The 8525's documentation doesn't specify exactly what close-up range is, however, and we found that using the close-up mode generally resulted in blurry shots whenever the camera was more than a few inches away from the subject."

MobileBurn reviews the Cingular 8525 and writes, "The Cingular 8525 is equipped with a 2 megapixel camera that, while not auto-focus, has a macro mode switch that allows the user to take better photos of close-up objects than would otherwise be possible. The photos taken by the camera are of average quality overall. They are a bit too digital looking in many cases, and tend to be a little dark and over saturated, but are at least passable as snapshots. The camera's UI is OK when it comes to accessing the most common functions, such as flash, brightness, and white balance, but the GUI menu system for the rest of the settings is quite clunky. The 8525's camera can also record video clips, and I was fairly pleased with the quality of the recorded clips."

Brighthand reviews the Cingular 8525 and writes, "with the addition of a faster processor, the 8525 can finally run voice-over-IP applications like Skype without overclocking, providing a significant benefit if you want to combine a cell phone and IP phone into one. ... The 8525's 2 megapixel camera provides more than adequate resolution, though as with almost all embedded cameras, quality is a secondary concern. One thing to take care of, however, is that the small manual focus mounted over the lens is properly set, lest you get nothing but blurry shots."