Nexus S camera quality - review

Here is a exclusive brief review of the camera quality of nexus S As with the Galaxy S family, Samsung has used a 5-megapixel camera for the Nexus S, complete with auto-focus and an LED flash. The biggest difference is in the UI, with Gingerbread bringing a new camera control layout, which makes much more sense for everyday use. Quality is also strong, a little better than on the Galaxy S, though as ever the low-light performance with the LED flash is heavily dependent on whether you’re in the sweet spot of not-too-close, not-too-far-away. It’s actually easier to get stronger low-light shots with the flash turned off, in fact.

 Video, meanwhile, is underwhelming, being limited to 720 x 480 resolution whereas the Galaxy S manages 720p. It’s perhaps a concession to the non-expandable storage – 720p HD takes a fair chunk of memory space – but remains an obvious gap on the spec sheet. Still, the clips the Nexus S can produce are “good enough” for a phone, though you’re unlikely to be replacing your Flip camcorder with the new handset.
As with the missing 720p support, there have been complaints over the Nexus S lacking either HDMI connectivity or DLNA streaming. While some users will certainly rue their omission, we can’t say we’re particularly disappointed not to have them onboard. Although we’ve had HDMI ports on smartphones before, we’ve only ever used it a handful of times and on several occasions encountered problems with the TV we’ve connected it to anyway. Similarly, DLNA remains a niche option, with consumers uncertain on both what it is and how to use it, and it demands a compatible device (whether TV, STB or other). Neither is a deal-breaker, we’d wager, to most users.
The front-facing camera will take stills but, at VGA resolution, they’re hardly impressive. Instead it’s intended for video calls, though the glaring absence is any sort of video chat functionality baked into Gingerbread itself. Apps like Fring and Tango do take advantage of it, however, and will work over WiFi and 3G, unlike Apple’s WiFi-only Face Time. Still, we can’t see video calling on Android reaching a tipping point until Google packages the functionality in the core OS.