Review: Motorola Charm
Photos
Image quality from the 3 megapixel camera on the Motorola Charm was not impressive. The phone lacks auto focus, and this hurt quite a few of my images, as the fixed focus lens blurred subjects that were within a few feet. Images taken outdoors on a bright, sunny day had a reddish cast to them. At full zoom, details were muddy and edges looked liquefied. Taking a step back, things weren't so bad, and besides the slight red tint, colors looked fairly accurate. I would share these pictures as MMS messages or reduced size Twitter pics, but I wouldn't post them anywhere people might want a closer look. Indoor images were almost unusable. Under good indoor light, pictures looked grey and unappetizing. Under lower lighting, images looked like they were sketched in pencil. Colors and details were mostly gone, and the images weren't even good enough for simple MMS messaging.
Video
Considering the camcorder only shoots in CIF resolution, which is only slightly larger than the QVGA display can show, I was happy to see my videos didn't fall prey to the usual mobile camcorder problems. Videos were blocky, for sure, and suffered from the same red cast as my still images. But motion wasn't much of a problem. I didn't see any of the wavy, liquid effect I get from worse phone camcorders. The video recorder also handled changing light fairly quickly, and even under dimmer indoor lighting, my videos were quite watchable.
3GPP / MPEG-4 format (viewable with QuickTime)