As I mentioned in my iPhone 3G review, the biggest and worst oversight by Apple in my opinion, flaw is the weak 2.0 Megapixel camera.  Now its not bad but is pretty much industry standard on phones now with many of the top models reaching 5 Megapixels. So for Apple to be famous for revolutionising products and industries they haven’t exactly set the world alight with this piece of hardware. Anyway my old phone a Samsung D900i boasted a 3 Megapixel camera with good auto focus and I thought it was a shame to go backwards – so in an attempt to justify my change or not I have compared the iPhone 3G’s camera with my Samsung D900i and also my 8 Megapixel Kodak P880.

To make it simple I conducted three test photographs with each camera and placed them next to each other in one final image for you to compare them.  The first example is of a close up shot indoors with bright colours on my Chinese dragon I bought four months ago. I’m not exactly an optical expert but I hope this tests the ability of the digital CCD to pick up different colours and the sharpness.  As you can see the Kodak P880 is clearly the sharpest and most in focus at the head of the dragon anyway.  Although the D900i doesn’t show the best colour it is not as fuzzy as the iPhone photo so I’ll put this second.  As expected by the megapixel stats, the iPhone comes in last but on the other hand you can see the bottom of the dragons cape is in better focus than the other two so it seems the iPhone has a longer minimum distance than the other two. Verdict: The iPhone has a poor/ non-existent macro feature and is not good at taking photos close, within 15cm.

The second test was outside in the daylight with a distance of about 30-40 cm.  I was surprised at the results on this test and I found it hard to distinguish between all three which was best.  The brick work looks great on the P880 and the D900i but I think the P880 just edges it on the detail of the light bulb – to be honest it should do for how much it cost as a standalone camera last year. The Samsung and the iPhone look very similar but as I’m being critical the D900i contains better saturation and definition. So this means once again the iPhone comes in last but I think the image is a lot better quality this time and is definitely a lot closer to the other two, and for many people they wouldn’t see much of a difference.

Finally the third test which is back inside with a distance of about 70-80 cm, is of a poster in my room.  This image comparison once again puts the iPhone at the worst with the writing quite blurry compared to the other two.  At the top is again a tough decision but the P880 image seems clearer and sharper throughout and the D900i is patchy. Just to point out these three photos were taken with my lamps on however the iPhone image seems to not correctly present the real colours where the D900i and P880 did…

Well, I conclude that the Kodak P880 is the best although the Samsung D900i could be used as a viable substitute for close up photos but remember where the Kodak will really shine is in medium to long distance photgraphs. So from my tests the iPhone comes worst, it’s a real shame that something so maticulously designed and constructed is let down by a tiny piece of internal hardware.  The mulitmedia promotion of the phone, in my opinion, is shattered with a poor quality camera meaning I would have to take another camera with me so I could take some decent quality snaps. Lets hope, come next year or whenever the next iPhone comes out, that Apple sort it out with a decent camera; should be a minimum of 3 megapixel. This lapse seems very unlike Apple and their usual perfectionist attitude, with all the troubles surrounding the launch of MobileMe and the iPhone 2.0 Software so far this year I hope this blip disappears soon. But what do you think? Do you think the iPhone camera is better, why not comment below?