Let’s move on, and see how the camera performs in various situations. Press the thumbnails for full size samples.
It’s a snap’n’share!
Let’s face it - the K660 camera is far from the best we’ve seen from Sony Ericsson. It’s a mediocre 2 mega pixel CMOS camera with a fixed focus. While it is quite good at dealing with low-light situations, it still lacks at least an LED flash. You can use zoom (not in full size mode) while taking a picture, but keep in mind that it’s digital zoom, and it does nothing more than crops your picture.
The revamped camera interface of the A2 software platform is easy to use, and it’s easy on the eye as well. It’s not lightening fast when going through the settings, but luckily you can use a few keypad short cuts for some selected features, such as self timer and night mode.
The settings menu will give you the ability to set the following;
- Shoot mode - Normal, Panorama, Frames & Burst
- Picture size - 2 MP (1600 x 1200 pixels), 1 MP (1280 x 960 pixels) & VGA (640 x 480 pixels)
- Night mode - Off & On
- Self-timer - Off & On
- White balance - Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent & Incandescent
- Effects - Off, Black & white, Negative & Sepia
- Settings - Picture quality (Fine & Normal), Review (On & Off), Save to (Mem. card & Phone mem.), Auto rotate (On & Off), Shutter sound (Sound 1, Sound 2, Sound 3, Sound 4 & Off) & Reset counter.
The lack of some certain settings compared to other phones is due to the lack of auto focus in the camera.
You will rarely end up with snaps that are poorly saturated with the K660. However, due to its lack of auto focus, the photos aren’t always that sharp and nice looking. I noticed a strange problem with the K660 on the first photos I did with it - semi-transparent yellow lines down across the photos, as visible on the fifth photo. Another thing is that there are a few minor problems with the white balance, which is clearly visible on the last sample photo.
K660 does video recordings as well. They’re encoded in MP4 format in a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. The frame rate is about 15 frames per seconds. The video bit rate is about 400 Kbps, which is OK. The video quality is expectable - nothing ground-breaking, but it isn’t bad either. You can check out a video sample below, or download it here.
Your recent snaps can easily be accessed by changing from camera mode to preview mode. I find the photo viewer very good, and it’s loaded with brilliant features, like X-Pict Story - a cool slide show application with mood settings, effects, transitions and sounds. Another nice feature is photo tagging - by tagging your photos, you’ll always know where they are, and it’ll be faster getting to them. If you don’t like that sort of sorting, then you should be happy to know that the K660 also automatically sorts your photos by month.