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Rather pleasingly for a £170 handset, the Orange San Diego packs a meaty 8MP camera on the rear, along with a 1.3MP offering on the front.
The front sensor is really there for video calling, whereas around the back the 8MP offering is the main attraction, with a single LED flash for company.
The decent snapper towers above the 5MP options found in other handsets in the San Diego's price range, including the Lumia 710, Sony Xperia U and HTC One V.
The camera app can be accessed via the application icon on the screen, or via the dedicated shutter button on the right-hand side of the San Diego – something of a novelty these days, since most manufacturers seem to have ditched this physical key.
Sadly the camera app can't be accessed from the lock screen, so instant, out of the pocket snaps may be tricky – with the physical key also locked at this stage.
The camera app itself loads in less than a second, but after that things start to get a bit frustrating.
Intel has included a wide number of functions within the camera app, but has inexplicably made the menu icons so small and difficult to understand that we found ourselves giving up most of the time and sticking with the default options.
We liked Intel's implementation of the setting options being hidden in a notification bar-style pull down, but the tiny size makes them difficult to read and hard to press.
After an age of fumbling, we managed to deduce that the San Diego offers eight colour effects, seven scenes, as well as ISO, white balance, shutter speed, exposure and many more controls.
Rarely do we see the quantity of options available on the San Diego on other camera phones, and we think Intel may have overdone it on the variety a bit, because it's still a mobile phone, not a digital camera.
The Orange San Diego's camera does have something of a party piece though – burst mode. Turn on burst mode and the camera will snap three, five or 10 images in less than a second.
This enables you to capture that perfect moment, be it junior scoring a goal or your friend doing the Funky Chicken, and considering the San Diego comfortably processes this on its single-core chip you've got to take your hat off to Intel.
Outdoors in decent light the 8MP camera stands up well and produces quality images. However, it tended to struggle more inside, with uneven light and dark areas having a negative effect on results.
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