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The HTC Radar camera is a 5MP jobby - not the most cutting edge of lenses, but pretty average and acceptable compared to much of what's around at the moment at this level. The HTC Titan, like the iPhone 4S, has an 8MP snapper, but that's obviously aiming for a higher market place.
As if to make up for the lack of megapixels, HTC spouts out specs such as f/2.2 lens and BSI sensor, which sound like a load of marketing guff but do help in the overall picture-taking process and make the end results worthy of a print. HTC has form when it comes to including decent cameras, and that hasn't been forgotten on the HTC Radar.
Firstly, having a camera button helps. You don't have to fiddle around with getting your grip on the phone a certain way or digging through menus that may be hard to see on a bright day. Wherever in the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango operating system you may be, a long press on the camera button will take you into the camera screen.
It's fairly basic on the surface, with buttons to just switch to front-facing mode or video. But when you get into the menu you're given a plethora of scene modes (providing Auto isn't to your taste, which - for the majority of people - it will be), plus a panoramic mode, options to control ISO levels, face detection and (our favourite), the option to switch to burst photography to take five photos in quick succession.
Ideally, this would be at hand on the main screen, because you may want to take a few bunches of pap-style pictures in one go without having to delve into the menu, but as it is, you can't do it that way.
The HTC Radar's LED can be set to on, off or auto, and thankfully HTC has fixed the bug we encountered on the Titan where the light didn't do as it was told, which we're glad to see. It's a really bright LED light (we're talking temporary blindness territory) and as such, shots taken in the dark come out very well.
Autofocus kicks in with a half press on the camera button, and performs as it should. We're suitably impressed with what we're given here, and, while 5MP may sound fairly pedestrian on paper, it's a good effort by HTC.
Autofocus is spot on and excels in bright daylight
Autofocus works just as well in an indoor setting
Even text can be clearly picked out with the autofocus without pain
Some close-up subjects can look ever so mildly out of focus when transferred to a computer
Similarly, some foreground subjects can also look blurred in full-size
Taking photos in darkness isn't ideal, unless you can keep your hand as still as a corpse
But that flash is blinding and will illuminate even the darkest subject brilliantly
The camera copes well in mixed light situations
Daylight photos look great, albeit a little colder than they perhaps could have done.
