Best Camera on a 4G Phone: myTouch Slide 4G Review

T-Mobile and HTC have got together and designed a great performing 4G phone with the best camera on the market today. With a build-up like that you’d expect the camera on the myTouch Slide 4G to something rather special. And it is.

As with other top-of-the-range 4G phones like the Sensation 4G (also for T-Mobile) or the AT&T Infuse the camera is a hefty 8 megapixels with dual-LED flash and 1080p HD video capture. But the myTouch Slide 4G has a number of new features that set it apart from the rest of the crowd.

The two most important features that might make you buy this phone instead of another are the wide aperture lens and a backside-illuminated sensor (BSI). The BSI sensor – a technology also found on the iPhone 4 – was developed to bring big improvements to both the speed at which the camera works and the depth of dynamic range the sensor can process. The wider aperture lens, meanwhile, means more light – more raw data – into the lens and camera sensor than the average phone camera.

The result of these two major enhancements working together is a sharper, clearer image. This is true even in low light and other situations in which camera phones usually perform badly.

We mentioned the camera speed. Another major leap forward for the myTouch Slide 4G is the elimination of shutter lag – that annoying split second delay between when you click the shutter and when the image is actually taken. As well as annoyance, it can often make the difference between getting or missing the shot. Happily, that’s a thing of the past for myTouch Slide 4G owners. Like the T-Mobile ads say, there’s zero shutter lag. You point. It shoots.

Other features to get photography aficionados salivating include a dedicated button that instantly snaps the camera back to life even if the phone is locked. On the camera itself you’ll find a great range of shooting options at your fingertips including BurstShot for capturing a fast sequence of images and SweepShot for creating easy panoramic images. The included image editing software is both impressive and more importantly useful.

If that’s not enough you can get really creative with the myTouch Slide 4G’s ClearShot HDR feature, which allows you to take stunning images even in the sort of bad light that makes other phone cameras falter.

Essentially HDR cameras take two images at the same time – one optimized for the bright parts of the scene and one optimized for the darker areas – and then combine the two to create a picture with an amazing dynamic range that really pops off the screen.

HDR technology is nothing new but what’s different with the myTouch Slide 4G is that the HDR feature is included in the camera – no more fooling around third-party apps or software to create an HDR image. You point. It shoots. This time in HDR.

Of course, as great as the camera on the myTouch Slide 4G is there are other important aspects to consider before the credit card comes out.

The myTouch is a solid smartphone too. It ships with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) as its OS and the latest version of the award-winning HTC Sense as a user interface. There’s a good selection of preloaded apps included on the phone without going over the top and drifting into bloatware territory. You’ll find the Netflix Android App ready to go along with Qik for video calls (the myTouch Slide 4G also has a front-facing camera).

The display is crisp and sharp but at 3.7 inches the touchscreen is smaller than many recent HTC 4G phones. That won’t be a problem for most because that just helps make it easier to fit into pockets and bags. In fact, it’s a very slim and compact phone – especially surprising given it has the same full physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard seen on the original myTouch and now enhanced for the 4G version of the phone.

All this state-of-the-art technology is powered by a top-of-range 1.2 GHz Snapdragon processor which makes this a fast smartphone that can keep up with – and sometimes outperform – other 4G phones in its class. Out of the box you’ll only get a 8GB microSD card but this is upgradeable to a 32GB card.

Bottom Line
If you’re any kind of photography fan the myTouch Slide 4G is hands down the best phone for you – the outstanding camera and zero shutter lag mean it’s hard to see another phone meeting, and probably exceeding, your expectations. On top of that, there’s fast and responsive 4G phone under the hood packed with useful productivity and social networking apps. This is the best T-Mobile phone in a long time.

Price & Availability
Available now, best price we’ve seen is on Amazon.