HTC Thunderbolt: Camera and Photo Examples

Posted by | 03/19/2011 | 15 Comments

The HTC Thunderbolt’s 8MP camera is pretty impressive, at least for a mobile phone. The images shot with the Thunderbolt are crisp and could easily pass as being shot with a point-and-shoot camera, as long as they’re shot with plenty of light.

Will the HTC Thunderbolt replace a high-quality point and shoot or DSLR? Absolutely not, but the best camera is the one that you have with you. Fortunately, the Thunderbolt’s built-in camera is respectable and you can capture nice print-quality photos.

As with all mobile phone cameras, the HTC Thunderbolt’s camera doesn’t perform well in dim light and its dual-LED flash doesn’t do enough to make up for it. One thing that I like about the Thunderbolt’s camera app is that there are several shooting adjustments that can be made. Users can adjust white balance and under/overexpose at will. Most people will likely just shoot with default settings, as I’ve been doing, and make adjustments later.

Thunderbolt Camera - Benz wheel (no filter)

Here are a couple of photos I took in the parking lot right after I bought my HTC Thunderbolt. The first is a close up shot of my car’s front wheel. If you click on the above photo, you’ll see that the Thunderbolt picks up individual bits of brake dust.

Thunderbolt Camera - Overexposed

The Thunderbolt’s camera app has some very basic photo editing capabilities. Users can crop photos, rotate them and add effects. Only one effect can be added at a time, which means your creativity is limited unless you download a third-party app from the Android Market.

Thunderbolt Camera - High Contrast

This is the result of selecting the high contrast option.

Thunderbolt camera - Cinnamon

This is an example of the Thunderbolt camera’s Cinnamon filter, which warms things up a bit.

Thunderbolt Camera - Bleak

The Thunderbolt’s camera app has a few filters that are a bit more drastic. This was my favorite, but I probably won’t use it very often as the effect will get tiring pretty quickly.

Thunderbolt Camera - Original

This is another image I shot on the Thunderbolt in its original form.

Thunderbolt Camera - Auto Enhance

If you aren’t looking for a creative effect, you can simply hit Auto Enhance and the app will try to improve contrast and make minor adjustments.

You can learn more about the HTC Thunderbolt here. The HTC Thunderbolt is the first phone with 4G LTE and it is extremely fast. However, the HTC Thunderbolt’s battery life is disappointing so far.

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Category: Hardware, Mobile, Reviews

About the Author (Author Profile)

Xavier Lanier is the publisher of Gotta Be Moible and Notebooks.com. He's a mobile technology geek that uses an iPhone 4S, iPad 2, Galaxy Nexus and Kindle Fire on a daily basis. He's an expert photographer that shoots primarily with Nikon DSLRs. You can follow Xavier on Twitter @xavierlanier and Google+

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  • GoodThings2Life

    Those are definitely pretty good, and it’s pretty obvious HTC has actually put some improvement into their camera application in the past year.

  • tivoboy

    I just wish it was coming out on sprint.

  • Daniel251314

    Once again, HTC still can not fix the problem about their camera app or the camera itself, all the photos and videos are taken by HTC’s camera look red in the middle of the pictures and videos. I think they had that problem since HTC HD2 (I may wrong), I thought they could fix the problem with the new camera on the thunderbolt. However, by looking at the first photo, seams they still have not fixed that problem.

    • http://www.facebook.com/evan.vieira Evan Vieira

      u probably see dead people too !

      • Taz_21

        ya i think he needs to get his eyes checked

    • DaveKts

      In messing around with the cam on my new thunderbolt I deffinately noticed a reddish ping color wash in the middle of my pics.. the amount of color wash depending on the white balance. Makes me want to exchange the phone for another brand but its too late. Both Motorola and Samsung (x2 and stratosphere) took much better pics with more accurate color and less low light noise.

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  • Anonymous

    No, he’s actually right. While this is better than most HTC’s I’ve seen, it still has that red tint to it. Also, the video quality, again the best HTC has done, but the colors seem washed out. The Galaxy S, and iPhone4 are still kings in this area (US).

  • http://twitter.com/Magaret999 Magaret

    The photo quality is not very good.

    ______
    wireless security camera

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  • http://pointandshootcamerasinfo.com/ Claire

    True photographers never use Auto mode! :)

  • http://www.espow.com/wholesale-security-surveillance-surveillance-cameras-wireless-camera-sets.html irene

    Obviously – HTC was concerned about the TB’s weight. That is the major trade-off we are going back and forth about in this forum. Batteries are heavy. The phone has too little battery power because HTC didn’t want it to be too heavy. And it’s too heavy because it needs too much battery power.
    “Man up” means shell out the bucks for a second battery for backup, or carry your charger around with you every time.you’re gonna be out for more than a few hours. Full cycling a battery every charge is a good way to shorten it’s life. Batteries last longer if they aren’t frequently brought too near to full discharge.

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