Six months ago I decided to switch from Boost Mobile back to Verizon. With Boost I just did not get the coverage I needed. Verizon is more expensive and I lost my “unlimited” data, however, as it turns out I don’t use that much data anyway. With the change in plans my missed calls have gone to almost nothing, which in my case, as a business phone is critical. Today I don’t want to discuss Verizon itself, I wanted to talk about the phone I use. The Samsung SM-W750V also called the ATIV, a Windows 8 phone.
Overall the phone is no surprise, it has a 5 inch touch screen, the normal resolution, a camera front and back. You can read about its specifications here: http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/SM-W750VMSAVZW
To me a cell phone is a business tool, not a social media device. I use it to contact my clients by phone and email and keep track of appointments. I do try to use its other features such as the weather, Cortana, OneDrive et al.
What I wanted you to know is even though the rear camera is 13 Megapixels, it sucks! Over time I have deleted most of the photos so I cannot show them to you. I then dropped the phone and cracked the camera lens, so taking photos now and using them would be dishonest. Below are some that were taken pre-drop for an article I am doing on battery storage. Of course no zoom was used for the battery images, however the one at Ford’s theater was zoomed in. All zoomed pictures were exactly like this.
1st take
Final good image
1st image of multiple batteries
Finally a decent image
The only Zoomed Image I found at this time.
While non-zoomed photos are “ok”, don’t bother trying to zoom in like you can with the Galaxy S5 that my wife has. On the ATIV you will only get blurry images, even at the least amount of zoom.
Back in late February I went to Washington DC for the first time. I was taking lots of pictures with my phone and none were worth a hill of beans. My wife’s Galaxy however did a fabulous job. To be sure it was not me and my total lack of skill, we switched phones for a day with the same result, the ATIV just takes lousy pictures when you zoom and most non-zoomed photos. It is not unusual for me to need to take 2 or 3 photos of items, not zoomed to get one good image.
The video recording is even worse, was not able to get anything useable without zooming in, and if you needed to zoom in, just like with the camera all you get is one giant blur. While in DC there was a major update pushed to the phone, it added some features and programs yet did nothing to help with pictures or their quality. I do admit that having updates pushed within a few hours of arriving in DC might have pushed my tin foil hat thinking a little, especially since my wife’s phone also had updates pushed at the exact same time. I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.
There are several built in programs or features that might have enhanced the camera. I have used the “ATIV camera”, however it tracks my location and made no difference in image quality. I tried the “MangaCamera” software, no difference (yes it is a toy program). The “Shooting Modes” program wants to use the “ATIV Camera” software, once again since it is a tracking program I gave it a try and without better results I disabled it.
Does the phone do a good job as a phone? Absolutely. Is it good as a modern computer? You bet. Does it have all the Apps an iPhone or Android has? Not a chance, however I knew that going in. Is it good or even acceptable as a camera? Nope! For 13 megapixels the lack of clarity is unacceptable.
The question is ‘would I buy the phone again? Yes I would. I make my living on Microsoft products, and people regularly ask me about this or that product. I feel and felt then that having a Windows based phone would give me options and ideas on how it interfaced with the user and outside world.
Until we meet again, have a virus free week.