Sample video taken with Dell Streak rear camera
The Dell Streak's 5-megapixel rear camera is capable of recording video at VGA resolution . . . and unfortunately it doesn't do it very well.
Camcorder settings include 4x digital zoom (you can't adjust the zoom while you're recording), automatic and night setting, white balance options (automatic, sun, fluorescent, incandescent), adjustable brightness and contrast, flicker adjustment (automatic, 50Hz, 60Hz), video format (MPEG-4, H.263), and resolution (176 x 144, 320 x 240, 640 x 480), but the resulting video quality just isn't impressive.
To show you what I mean, I took a ~20-second VGA video with the Streak yesterday under what I would call pretty optimal conditions (outdoors, natural sunlight) and uploaded the unedited clip to YouTube directly from the device. Lower your expectations and have a look below.
You can download the original video file here to view it without the YouTube compression.
The subject matter is boring, I agree, and the video quality isn't horrible or unwatchable, but compared to all the phones with video recording up to 720p, the Streak's camcorder just isn't good enough. It's better than nothing and would certainly do in a pinch, but I don't plan on using it for anything other than more video tests for this site.
