The Dell Streak Review

The Camera

The Dell Streak ships with two cameras: a front facing 640 x 480 camera and a rear facing 5MP camera (2592 x 1944). Both are capable of recording video but only at 640 x 480. As you’ll soon see, given the quality of the sensors, it’s not a problem that the Streak doesn’t support 720p video recording.

The Camera app gives you the usual set of Android camera options. You can manually set white balance, adjust JPEG compression and even sync the camera to 50Hz or 60Hz signals for recording videos of displays.

The Streak has a dual LED flash on the rear facing sensor. The two LEDs are bright but not quite EVO 4G bright. There’s no auto flash option, it’s either on or off. On top of that you can’t use the flash while recording a video.

The size and shape of the Streak pretty much dictate that you want to use it in landscape mode, with two hands at that. The problem is holding the Streak naturally with two hands often puts your left finger over the camera lens. It’s not an insurmountable problem, but annoying.

I’ve already complained about how long the Camera app takes to launch and take photos. The problems don’t end there. The live view frame rate in the app varies from what looks to be 30 fps to probably half that if you point the camera at a poorly lit scene.

Taken with the rear camera

Taken with the front camera

At web resolutions the images the Streak produces are fine, but blown up to native resolution they leave a lot to be desired. The pixels are all very vague and over sharpened. Color reproduction is slightly off, almost as if there’s an overactive UV filter on all the time.

Compared to an iPad, you at least get a camera with the Streak. Compared to the EVO 4G or iPhone 4, the Streak’s camera isn’t very good.

Video recording quality isn't terrible but not great.