Chai Time: Comparing Top 3rd Party Camera Apps for Android-Sahen Rai

One of the cooler features of Android is the fact that you can change a lot of things about your experience. Don't like your launcher? Change it! Don't like your icons? Change them! Etc... One of the more interesting changes you can make to Android is what apps you use. You're given the freedom to use tons of different apps for things like system utilities. Camera apps being one of these. A lot of the time stock camera apps are fine,I mean the stock moto camera app allows me to use double shake to open. Which I wouldn't give up for much.  But if you do want a change, at least you can have it. So let's go over some camera apps you can download right now for a change of pace. Apps will be judged on a few criteria, as you will see below.

Notes:

- Photos all taken on a Moto X 2013

- Best photos will be the ones I like the best

Google Camera

UI:

Features:

- Photo Spere

- Panorama

-Lens Blur

Software Look and Feel:Software feels great. It's extremely clean and makes taking photos front and center. Not as fully featured and tweakable, but makes the actual process of taking the picture simple.

Ease of Use: Extremely Easy. Focus is made by tapping anywhere on the screen, and the shutter button is huge. Screen isn't taken up by really anything except the camera app, nice and simple. Accessing other camera modes is as simple as swiping from the left of your screen.

Best Shot with best app settings:

Open Camera

UI:

Features:

- Gives angle and direction you're shooting in degrees on the screen as you shoot

- Face detection for focus

- Photo Resolution as you shoot

- Provides time and device storage free at top

- Lots of light exposure settings

Software Look and Feel: Mix of new and old. Some parts of the UI look cleaner and have a newer design, but other parts feel outdated.

Ease of Use:Easy to just take a picture. But if you really want the most out of the app, you'll have to spend a little time on it.

Best Shot with best app settings:

HD Camera ULTRA

UI:

Features:

- 2 Focus Modes

- 3 Settings for white balance

Software Look and Feel: Has advertisements which is a little unfortunate. But the interface is nice and simple, albeit looking a bit old. It sorta looks like it was made a few years ago and the developer hasn't really changed it much since.

Ease of Use: Easy to use, looking much like most stock camera apps in terms of design.

Best Shot with best app setting:

Camera MX

 

UI:

Features:

- EV correction

- Shoot the past: allows you to go back a decent amount of frames before you took the shot and pick a photo from a few seconds before you shot.

- Large amounts of effects and filters

Software Look and Feel:Probably second best on this list. Looks good overall and makes taking filtered and regular photos pretty easy.

Ease of Use: Simple to use, and fun to mess around with filters and effects

Best Shot with best app setting:

Have favorite camera apps of your own? Let us know what they are on twitter @masala_tech, and remember to keep things spicy!

By Sahen Rai