The uneven performance of cameras in rugged handhelds and tablets
Recently I ran the usual set of integrated camera test pictures for our RuggedPCReview.com product testing lab with four devices all at once. That meant taking two pictures each of the 20 or so test settings around our offices in East Tennessee. The settings represent some tasks that users of rugged handhelds and tablets might do on the job. Examples are meter reading, capturing information from accessible and not-so-accessible labels, markings, or instructions, and so on. For a splash of color and to test close-up performance we also include pictures of flowers and greenery.
The reason why we take two pictures of each subject is because, on the job, one doesn’t always have time to carefully set up a subject and baby the shot. It’s very much point-and-shoot. On the job one might take two shots of whatever information is to be captured, just to make sure. So we do that, too. That cuts the possibility of getting a lousy shot in half. And lousy shots are still possible, even with the latest cameras and imagers.
Back in the lab, we examine the 20 or so pairs of pictures and select the better of each pair. We then pick nine representative shots and arrange them in a 3 x 3 picture image compilation. We save that compilation full-size as well as down-sampled to fit into our web page templates, both at 72dpi and 144dpi.This way, viewers can click on the screen image to load the full-size compilation and, if so desired, download that onto their computer for closer examination.
Cameras integrated into mobile computers aren’t new. They’ve been around for two decades or more. In fact, rugged handheld computers and tablets had cameras even before cameras became an integral (and many say the most important) part of every smartphone. That’s because rugged mobile computers are, in essence, data collection devices, and image data is part of that. Unfortunately, early such integrated cameras were often quite useless. Many were terrible and in no way up to the jobs they were supposed to do.
We’ve pointed this out again and again over the years — first in Pen Computing Magazine and now in RuggedPCReview.com, and heard all the reasons and excuses why integrated cameras weren’t any better. It took the iPhone and then the global smartphone revolution to demonstrate that tiny cameras in very small devices could be not only acceptable, but very good. So good, in fact, that smartphone cameras have replaced the dedicated point & shoot camera market. And so good that here at RuggedPCReview.com even for product photography we’ve been using smartphones and no longer dedicated cameras for the last three years.
Unfortunately, while smartphone cameras went from very good to excellent to downright stunning, such progress was slow in translating into similar improvements in integrated cameras. Cameras built into rugged mobile devices have become much better thanks to the global proliferation of smartphones and tablet technology. Better imagers are available at lower costs, and that means that we’re now seeing SOME rugged devices with very decent cameras. Decent, but, with some notable exceptions, certainly not stunning like in the better smartphones.
Why is that? And why does this problem persist? We don’t know. The primary excuses for mediocre integrated camera performance used to be size, cost, and lack of OS support. That doesn’t wash anymore. If sliver-thin smartphones can take terrific pictures, it can’t be size. Imager cost, likewise, has come way down. But how about operating system support? That may be the most likely reason.
It has long baffled us why cameras integrated into Windows tablets perform nearly as well as imager specifications suggest. By far the most likely culprit there is the truly awful generic Windows Camera app. Yes, there’s the ever-present driver support issue, and supporting all sorts of different imagers in all sorts of different computer hardware isn’t easy. But even that cannot justify the awfulness of the Windows Camera app that usually lacks, well, just about everything. The feeling we often get when testing integrated cameras is that the imager could do much better, but not when it has to deal with the stark, ultra-basic Windows Camera app that supports almost nothing you’d expect from a camera.
Compare the imaging wizardry that can be done with today’s smartphones with the sad nothingness of the Windows Camera app. The gulf couldn’t be larger. Things are considerably better on the Android device side, because Android was designed from the start as a smartphone OS. And that included decent camera software. Android, of course, also has to deal with all sorts of different imagers and hardware, but there’s the economy of scale. Android is absolutely dominant in smartphones and that means literally billions of devices, and thus massive software developer support. As a result, rugged Android devices almost always outperform rugged Windows-based devices in imaging operation and quality. By a considerable margin.
What’s the solution? We don’t know. Maybe developing a decent camera app simply isn’t economically feasible for the relatively low production runs even of popular rugged devices. Maybe the assumption is that almost every user will have a smartphone in their pocket anyway, and use that for serious photography. But then why even bother with putting integrated cameras into devices? Are they just a checkbox item for government requests for proposals?
But how did we make out with testing those four devices? For the most part, the resulting pictures were much better than what was possible in the past. Some of them were even excellent. And each device was capable of capturing images and video good enough for the job of documenting project-related information.
That said, the one-size-fits all nature of the generic Windows and Android camera apps can be very frustrating when it’s so obvious that the software is holding back the hardware. If the software cannot take full advantage of imager specs, when the lack of settings and functionality results in blurry pictures because the software can’t properly focus or adjust for lighting, movement, contrast or type of light, then it hardly makes any sense to use the camera at all.
It pains me to be so negative about this, especially since some progress has been made. But it just is not enough. At a time when smartphones offer 4K video at 60 frames per second, 1080p/30fps simply isn’t enough. Sluggish, lagging operation isn’t acceptable. And it makes no sense for camera software to not even support the full resolution of the hardware, or only in certain aspect ratios. It was terrible software that killed off the dedicated point & shoot camera market when smartphones came along, and it is terrible software that continues to make so many integrated cameras essentially useless.
This really needs to be addressed. As is, Android is way ahead of Windows in making good use of imaging hardware built into rugged mobile computing gear. Bill Gates recently mentioned that one of his greatest regrets is not to have taken the mobile space seriously and let Android become the (non-Apple) mobile systems OS winner. It seems Microsoft still isn’t taking the mobile space seriously. — C. Blickenstorfer, July 2019