Review: Samsung Alias 2
Camera
The Alias 2's camera uses the familiar Verizon Wireless software and is launched via the dedicated camera/video key to the left of the navigation controls, or by hopping through the menu system. If you hit the camera button, it boots in a quick 2 seconds. Framing pictures in the screen is simple.
Once you've framed your shot, hitting the center button takes the shot almost immediately. The image pops up onto the screen and you have to choose whether to send, save or erase it. Saving it takes about 2 seconds before you can take another picture.
Hitting the nav buttons up or down will increase or decrease the brightness level. If the camera is set to full resolution, you cannot zoom in or out. If, however, you dial down the resolution setting a bit, pushing the nav buttons to the left or right lets you zoom in and out.
While in the camera mode, the left soft key takes you to the gallery application. The right soft key lets you access all the user-adjustable settings. They include the usual items such as resolution, timer, brightness and how the camera measures and balances the light. You can also set the ISO ("film" speed, or sensitivity) at 100, 200 or 400.
Perhaps the coolest feature is the mutli-shot mode. You can choose to take multiple exposures at once or even a panorama shot, which can be merged to form one large picture.
If you want to take a picture of yourself, the best way to do it is to press and hold the play/pause key on the front of the Alias 2. This will bering up a sub menu, including capture image or video. Select image and you can then use the exterior display to help frame a self portrait. It is nice that this is here, but if you think you can have the camera running with the phone open and then close it to get the same functionality, you'll be mistaken. This is not intuitive at all.
The Alias 2's video camera has three resolution settings, as well as several white balance and duration settings to choose from. Otherwise the controls are similar to the camera application.
Gallery
The gallery application is unchanged from other phones that use the Verizon UI. The gallery is locked to a two-column view, and scrolling through images is speedy. When viewing the gallery, hitting the right soft key brings up the expected set of options for moving, renaming and otherwise interacting with your pictures.
When a photo is selected and opened, the right soft key opens an editor tool that lets you do things with the pictures such as cropping, zooming, adding frames and so on.
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