Name: Torch 9800
Brand: Blackberry

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BlackBerry Torch: Camera

BlackBerry Torch review: Camera

The Torch comes with a five-megapixel camera – that's about mid range these days but, with autofocus and LED flash, it is effective for most situations.

Startup time from cold was just over a second, trumping the iPhone which can often take three to four seconds to get going.

Images were good, though the flash under 'normal' settings was a little too eager sometimes – coming on when it didn't really need to, and it made the images look a little more yellow than they needed to be.

You really notice the change between what you see when you're focusing and the processed image. After the shutter click, the image changes to something richer and bolder in front of your eyes – as though an autofix has been performed.

There are multiple scene modes – but while you should commend RIM for giving so many options, it felt like there were too many. This is not the quality of a standalone camera and you'd still take your proper camera on holiday so does it really need 11 different scene options? Most users will just leave it on Automatic, which does the job well.

Even in pitch-black conditions, that very setting managed to pick out and autofocus on items, bathing them in a flash of light.

In low light, the shutter was too slow to capture the shot – it failed to get the dog wagging its tail and gave us a blur instead – and similarly in bright light, there is a little bleed from the sky. But this is a camera on a phone, not a camera on its own, and is definitely RIM's best effort so far. The big screen sets it a little bit higher up the bar than the Bold 9780 when it comes to taking pictures.