Review: HTC Status
Camera
The Status has a 5 megapixel camera with touch-to-focus and a flash. These basic three features make for a solid foundation when it comes time to take some snap shots.
You might bemoan the Status's lack of a dedicated camera button on the side, but HTC made up for it with the long-press camera button on the Status's keyboard. The comma button, next to the spacebar, both opens the camera application and can be used as a shutter release key. The camera can of course also be opened from an on-screen shortcut.
The camera's tools are a fairly standard lot for an HTC device. The basic viewfinder has a scroll bar on the left side of the screen for zooming in/out, and some shortcut controls on the right (access to video camera, user-facing camera, flash, and photo gallery). The main settings menu is accessed by pressing the capacitive menu key on the Status, and it offers a host of options for fine-tuning the behavior of the camera. Functions such as the resolution, white balance, color control, timer, and so on can be adjusted here.
Press either the comma/camera button or the on-screen software shutter button to capture images.
The Status offers all the right tools, but the performance is lagging a bit. The camera is slow to react to most input. It is slow to open, slow to focus, slow to capture images, slow to open the settings menus, and so on. I missed a few shots because of this, and you probably will, too.
Gallery
HTC has taken some nice liberties with the photo galley application. Obviously, it allows you to see all your own images. When viewing images captured on the device, you have access to some basic editing tools, such as crop, rotate, and effects. The effects aren't advanced, but let you perform some basic repairs when it comes to fixing exposure, contrast, etc.
The Photo Gallery also natively ties into your Facebook and Flickr accounts. This is cool. It lets you page through your own photos, as well as the photos of your friends on Facebook and Flickr. What's neat is that you can add comments to Facebook photos as well as view other comments from the Gallery app.
This feature is a little bit slow, though, as it has to go to the network to sync your friends' images. It doesn't appear to cache images on the phone, and offers a live view of them. This means if you have a crappy network connection, it won't be a quick, seamless experience to flip through Facebook/Flickr photos. But hey, at least the option is there.
AT&T Updates Its Facebook Status to Intro HTC Status
iPhone 14 Plus Offers a Big Screen For Less
Qualcomm Taps Iridium for Satellite Connectivity
New Pixel Feature Drop Adds Two-Way Voice Calls via Text
HTC Status
