PreCentral: The webOS Wish List: Advanced camera controls

[News Reporter]

We're not going to sugar coat this one - the camera on the Pre3 is the best camera to grace a webOS device, and it's okay. It's not great, but it's decent. But it's saddled with the same camera app that webOS has had since practically day one. You can toggle between video and stills, cycle beetween auto, on, and off flash, and hit the shutter/record button.

Missing, in comparison to competing smartphone platforms: using the front camera, multi-exposure HDR photos, a timer, white balance, automatic panoramas, and much much more. Truth is, the webOS camera app isn't built to handle these features - adding a camera switch button to the TouchPad Go's camera app crashes the tablet. The camera app needs an overhaul so users can at least do their best to make up for the shortcomings of the sensor.

Our suggestion is to utilize Enyo - put in a pull-out settings tray where users can access all of this more advanced stuff plus the everybody-does-it-because-it-looks-cool basic filters (sepia, black-and-white, pop colors, etc). And if the user doesn't want that stuff, they don't have to touch it. And while we're at it, something's frustrated us for a long time when taking pictures with webOS smartphones - the image fills the entire screen, going under the shutter button. This isn't in and of itself a problem, except that the camera takes 4:3 ratio photos and the Pre series smartphones have 3:2 and 5:3 screens, meaning the top and bottom of photos are always cut off when trying to frame things up. Everybody else has solved this by framing the entire image on the screen and putting primary controls off to the side - there's no reason webOS shouldn't either.

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entry? Of course you do - the comments are below. Surely you have your own ideas as to what ought be on the webOS wish list, and so .