Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
The camera on the Samsung Galaxy Xcover is something of a disappointment on paper. It shoots stills at just 3.1 megapixels, making it pretty much entry-level as far as today's smartphones are concerned.
The lens is slightly recessed, so it should be able to avoid getting scratched and buffeted by all the rough and tumble the phone is designed to take, and there's a flash.
The flash doesn't work well more than a few feet from your subject, however, and even then it's not great.
Shooting modes are fairly limited, but there is a panorama mode and alongside the usual sports, indoor and night modes there's a mode for photographing text.
Camera controls sit on the edges of the Samsung Galaxy Xcover's screen, where they are easy to find by touch. Because there's no shutter button, you can assign the menu key as a camera shutter, or use the on-screen button, which is just as easy.
WHITE SKY: You can see at a glance that the camera delivers only average quality photos. It can't cope with the sky in this photo, though the water and the bridge are OK, as is the greenery. Zoom in even a little bit and you notice the pixelation.
PANORAMA: Panorama mode stitches together eight photos, which are taken in sequence automatically as you pan. The result is a photo 2640 pixels wide x 400 pixels high. The stitch quality isn't too bad, and the process is fairly fast.
MODES: Moving through the standard Normal, Black and White, Sepia and Negative filters, you see again how badly the camera handles variance in light. The sky wasn't especially bright on our shooting days, either.
INDOORS: Indoors, the camera copes fairly well with average household lighting conditions. But don't try to take pictures as it gets darker.
