Family, travel, mom blog | Theme Park Mom (Leigh Caldwell)

Verizon Palm Pre Plus review: The camera and the camcorder

Posted by ThemeParkMom on March 8, 2010 | 1 Comment

A weekend at the beach in Jacksonville, Fla., provided a great opportunity for me to evaluate the Verizon Palm Pre Plus camera and share the results with you here.

This device has a 3.0 megapixel camera with an LED flash. Two things like about it:

• There is an easy way, right from the camera screen to turn the flash on, turn the flash off or leave it on auto. With my previous cell phones with cameras, I refrained from taking pictures in “no flash photography allowed” situations, because I didn’t know how to turn off my flash.
• The camera takes multiple pictures quite rapidly. There is no real lag time between shots.

One thing I don’t like about the camera:

• There is no zoom capability. This is likely a choice of the developer – speed over a digital zoom – and if you have to make the choice, I guess I would lose the zoom, too. But it would be nice to let the user make that choice on a case-by-case basis.

That said, overall I am happy with the Verizon Palm Pre Plus camera. Here are some pictures I took with it. They are completely unedited, and you can click them to see the actual size the camera takes.

The view from our hotel room at the Quality Suites Oceanfront in Jacksonville.

Taken in a dark room with the Verizon Palm Pre Plus camera flash, at the Museum of Science and History in Jacksonville.

Outside with the sun overhead, at the Jacksonville Beach Pier.

As I mentioned in my last review post, an update to Palm’s webOS last week gave the Verizon Palm Pre Plus a camcorder function. I am very pleased with how it works! Not only can you shoot video on the Verizon Palm Pre Plus, there is also an edit function that allows you to trim the ends of the video easily. Here is a video I shot, edited and uploaded straight to YouTube from my phone. It was shot at the Jacksonville Museum of Science and History in a room with the lights turned off.

Disclosure notice: Verizon paid for my Palm Pre Plus and is paying for one month of my service in exchange for me trying the phone and posting about my experiences on my blog. I’m still thinking for myself, though, and you can count on me to provide my honest opinion of this product.