ATEKsoft CoolCamera extends your Smartphone camera

I don't use the integrated 1.3 mega pixel shooter in my XV6700 all that often; the image quality is just so-so and I don't really have that much control over the camera settings. That all might change thanks to ATEKsoft's CoolCamera application. This will only work with certain Smartphones, most notably those made by HTC, but adds some nice features:

- High frame rate (up to 25 fps) and smooth video.
- Efficient encoding algorithm
- Easy camera control. All actions can be performed using hardware buttons only.
- Camera adjustment without leaving view-finder mode.
- Interval picture capturing.
- High resolution video in Motion Jpeg AVI format.
- Pause/resume video recording process.
- Webcamera mode (even through Wi-Fi!)

I particually like the last feature where the software allows you to use your Smartphone camera as a webcam for various VoIP and IM clients like Skype, MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger. The software costs $14.90, but you can download a limited trial directly from ATEKsoft.

(via Mobile Gadget News)

-kct

Comments

[Steve]

Hold that thought on "ATEKsoft Cool Camera software for HTC devices can help with your pictures too."

I just took these two photos with my PPC6700 device, the first using the built in Camera App and the second using the ATEKsoft trial version. Both settings were made sure to be as close as possible (meaning everything option that I found, I made exactly the same on both programs)

Resolution: 1.3 MP

Below are the links to the two photos

Photo using ATEK: Size ~1.4 Megs
http://img330.imageshack.us/img330/5479/607111601395eu.jpg

Photo using Camera app (built in): Size ~244kb
http://img128.imageshack.us/img128/676/200607111601000053qf.jpg

I must be doing something wrong because the same photo taken with the ATEK software is HUGE and doesn't look better at all. Thoughts?

[Steve]

I did a few more tests and I blogged the results over at SmartMobileAssets.com

Link here:
http://smartmobileassets.com/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b=blogs,m=1152660405,s=0

Hope that answers the question about ATEKSoft being a better camera program or not.