Microsoft Offers Detailed Look At The Camera & Picture Features Coming With Mango [Windows Phone 7 Mango Pictures & Camera Features Get Detailed by Microsoft]

Posted on TFTS by Robert Nelson on Wednesday, 31. August 2011 under: General Postings

It looks like Microsoft has offered up another thorough breakdown in terms of new features that we can expect to see once Mango comes available for the general Windows Phone 7 using public. The latest is offering a look at the features that will come along with the Pictures and Camera.

And as we have seen from some of the Windows Phone television commercials — the ease of use and quickness in terms of accessing the camera is important. That being said, it looks like that will remain just as important, however Mango will bring more goodies such as making the images easier to share and perhaps a bit more important — making them look better with a feature called autofix.

Breaking this down into what it is, the camera and then the pictures, we can begin things with the Camera features. In addition to the autofix, there will also be the ability to have your favorite settings be saved, the ability to mute the shutter sound, touch focus and improvements made to how you will review your just captured images.

Camera:
Autofix—Apply some common photographic fixes to a picture, on your phone, in one tap.
Touch focus and capture—Tap any spot on the screen to focus there and take the shot. (This varies according to hardware—some phones will have tap-to-capture but will still automatically center focus.)
Sticky settings—Save your custom camera settings for next time.
Ability to mute the shutter sound—Good for taking pictures at those school holiday pageants (not available in all countries and regions).
Review pictures above the lock—Snap a photo when your phone is locked, then take a peek at it above the lock. You’ll only be able to get to photos you just took—better for security.
Changes for portrait orientation—Now, when you take a picture in portrait orientation, you’ll see it in portrait orientation when you review it.

In terms of the Pictures, some of the biggies here appear to deal with sharing whether it be on Facebook, Twitter or your SkyDrive. There is also more options to personalize your images as well as pin individual albums to the Start and more. Breaking each of these down a bit more and they come as follows;

Pictures:
Video sharing—Send your vids in email or post them to Facebook or SkyDrive.
Twitter integration—Tweet your pics!
Easy picture tagging on upload to Facebook or SkyDrive.
View and add tags on your friends’ Facebook and SkyDrive pictures.
Integration with the People Hub—View your friends’ albums on their contact cards and on Group cards.
People view—See snapshots and albums from your favorite contacts in the Pictures Hub.
Personalize—Tag some favorites and choose Shuffle background in the Pictures Hub, and you’ll see your favorite photos on the Hub and on Start.
When you choose a photo from within an app, you can now pick from online albums on Facebook or SkyDrive, not just pictures saved on your phone.
Quick access to the Camera Roll—Before, it took two taps in the Pictures Hub to get the photos you’ve snapped. Now it’s front and center.
Apps pane—Developers can register their photo-related apps to show up in the Pictures Hub for easy access.
Autoshare to SkyDrive changed to Automatically upload to SkyDrive, which you can turn on to upload a lower-res version of every picture you take to a private location on SkyDrive.
Pin any album to Start, including Facebook albums.

Bottom line here, we often here talk about how the best camera is the camera that you have with you — and for many that is 100 percent accurate. But more to the point here, we are seeing more and more casual photographers using nothing more than their mobile phones to take and share images. That being the case, Microsoft seems to be gearing up nicely in the ‘people who want a good and easy to use camera on their smartphone’ category.

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