It recently became clear that following the want for Copy and Paste on your glossy phone, you now want ‘Zoom’. This was shown even more so with the recent success of Camera Zoom [App Store] which managed to stay on the number one top paid app slot for at least 4 weeks.

But one app managed to end that streak. The question is, Why?

Before getting into the comparison review, in which one of these apps will be crowned the ‘Winner’ and RazorianFly’s camera app choice for iPhone, each of the photos taken with each app were taken in the same lighting conditions, and used the same hardware; an iPhone 3GS (White) running a beta version of iPhone OS 3.1

Camera Zoom

Designed by Kenditech Camera Zoom is an application which adds ‘zoom’ capability to your iPhone’s camera. It hit the store in April of this year to huge fanfare, becoming the first and only ‘exclusive’ zoom function application for iPhone. The app boasted that it would let your IPhone’s camera zoom in and out (in real time) simply by moving an on-screen slider. The features included:

- Option to tap anywhere on the screen to take a photo
- Upto 4x Digital Zoom
- Camera Roll Preview
- Option to swipe in (and out) to zoom
- Option to ask before the photo is saved
- Customize the sliders position

On July 20th, an update hit the store which finally made the app iPhone 3GS compatible, bringing with it two new features which would be the sole key to Camera Zoom’s success. These included:

- Tap to Focus (and Auto-Focus for 3GS)
- Auto adjust photo after taking (for best quality)

So, How well did it take photos? Well I took Camera Zoom for a test drive today. Below are the results of this test shoot. To make the results as fair as possible I took the same two photos five times. Below is result #5.

As you can probably see, as default the app exports photo at the iPhone’s native resolution (320 x 480). Although this seems like a low resolution, this is only the default setting, and can be changed in the app’s setting panel. Also, above you’ll also be able to see the export quality of the 100% zoomed photo – not very tasty eh? For some reason the image quality on Camera Zoom, even with using the new camera within the iPhone 3GS is severely reduced.

Extras

That said, Camera Zoom does offer a few other extra settings which enhance the experience. Tapping the information button (bottom right) brings up an in-app setting panel. Here you have the option to turn the ’320 x 480′ export option off. Once you do this, Camera Zoom will export your photo at a resolution of 600 x 800.

Some other Camera Zoom settings include the option to turn ‘Full Screen Shutter’ on or off. Turn it on, and you’ll be able to tap anywhere on the screen to take a photo. Turn it off, and you’ll have to hit the camera button on the bottom tool bar. You’ll also have the option to have the app ask you to save a photo before it does, and the option to have a full screen slider. This allows you to swipe anywhere on the screen itself, to zoom in and out, instead of using the slider UI. Finally, the last setting in the panel allows you to select the position of which the slider bar to zoom in and out, shows up.

Camera Genius

Currently on sale from $2.99 to $0.99, and designed by Code Goo, Camera Genius [App Store] promises to give you all the basic camera features you want, in one simple app. Hitting the App Store back in February of this year with what I have to say was a pretty hideous UI, you probably overlooked Camera Genius – and honestly? I don’t blame you.

However, after each incremental update the app began to get noticeably better. Becoming compatible with iPhone OS 3.0, and eventually getting anti-shake stabilization. In the latest update to the software which hit on August 8th, and which Code Goo were only kind enough to let us know about, Camera Genius got re-designed. Completely.

What happened next to Code Goo’s surprise was Camera Genius knocked Camera Zoom off the top paid app spot, which it had held for a number of weeks in succession. The question is, Why? Well to answer that, we first have to take a look at how Camera Genius’ is at taking photos. Below is the result of our test shoot. Again, to ensure we got a final result which we considered as fair as possible, we took the same two photos five times. Below is result #5.

As you can probably see, Camera Genius’ anti-shake stabilization greatly increases the quality of the exported image. By default, the app exports non-zoomed photos at 1536 x 2048, and zoomed photos at 384 x 512 – but offers no further size options to export to after this.

Extras

As well as allowing you to zoom in and out on your subject, Camera Genius also offers some other ‘extra’ camera functionality you may be interested in. These features include:

Sound Capture
Active the camera shutter by the level of surrounding sound

Anti Shake
Reduce the level of artifacts left in the final result

Big Button
Just like Camera Zoom, Camera Genius also allows you to turn the whole of the iPhone’s screen real estate into a shutter button

Guides
Activating this feature will overlay a faint grid over the photo capture area. Helping you to align those awkward shots.

Timer
Activating this feature will display a timer on the photo capture area. Once you tap to take the photo it will start counting down. The timer setting is set at 10 seconds, and to my knowledge, cannot be adjusted to reflect a lower or higher amount of time.

As well as all of the above, the app also offers an albeit Americanized ‘Camera Guide’. The guide features 9 sections of photography in general, and shows you some examples of what results you should be able to achieve with Camera Genius on your iPhone.

Comparison Overview

After looking at these two apps in detail over the weekend, I found Camera Genius came out on top. Although Camera Zoom was the first to the table, and brought us that basic functionality which was so badly needed, the export size and overall quality of the photos taken with the app, coupled with the lack of an extended feature set makes me come to the conclusion Camera Zoom is a good app, but badly executed.

Then we come to Camera Genius. Again, a good application which started off being not so great. However the recent update to the software has shot this app to the top of the store, and rightly so.

With photo export sizes and quality superseding Camera Zoom, and a variety of other features including anti-shake stabilization and sound capture, Camera Genius becomes “RazorianFly’s Camera app choice for iPhone”.

Although both of these applications will never replace the functionality of having a real nice camera with integrated zoom built into the iPhone’s hardware from get go, they’ll definitely tide you over, until Apple does decide to pull it’s finger out on this one.