Review: QuickPanorama PRO Symbian3
Score:
62%
For anyone wanting to create panorama photographs on their Symbian smartphone, we've had a number of free and commercial options over the years, of varying degrees of compatibility and availability. The basic principle is the same, that of stitching together photos on the phone to create an artistic 'panorama', and the somewhat cumbersomely named QuickPanorama PRO Symbian3 is the latest entrant in the field, implemented in Qt. Read on for my review.
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The interface of QuickPanorama PRO is possibly indicative of the early state of the Qt software scene: - it's functional and pretty enough, in a simple way, without really offering any kind of power or flexbility.
Start the utility and there's a basic explanatory graphic, then it's on to a small viewfinder and a big 'Start' button. No settings, no options, you just start pointing, shooting and swivelling (in a non-rude way). A blue and red line pair show how level you're keeping the device, though it takes a few goes to work out how vertical movement relates to the blue line and how you're going wrong.
Unlike previous panorama applications, there's no obvious 'capture' point, you're expected to simply keep rotating until you run out of subject (and tap on 'stop') or hit the built-in capture limit. Because of the continuous nature of the procedure, I'm not sure how many photos are being stitched, but the processing is probably done as you go along, seemingly because there's no lengthy, dedicated 'processing' time after the end of capture.
Once complete, there's the option to exit to the opening screen, to retry the panorama (if you felt you'd messed up the panning, looking at the preview on-screen) or to save your result to your memory card. Somewhat disappointingly, the resultant panorama JPG is only about (2500 pixels wide and) 440 pixels high - pretty enough on-screen on your phone and but looking fuzzy on your desktop, and definitely not enough for an impressive printout later on for sticking on your wall.
Here's a sample, click to enlarge or download the original:
Considering that I was testing QuickPanorama PRO on the superlative-camera-equipped Nokia N8, I was disappointed by the overall clarity. Yes, the panorama algorithms did their job well enough and only one of the stitches is really obvious (and that mainly because a car drove by), but I was expecting clearer photo quality across the board. On the plus side, this works with any of the Symbian^3 phones, so making panoramas isn't restricted to just the likes of the N8 and N86 these days.
Is it worth £3? Only if you're a C6-01 or C7 owner and have been really, really hankering to make your own landscape shots. N8 owners should use the free Nokia Panorama instead, which produces larger and better results, albeit with the slight caveat of some 'processing' time after capture.
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 9 Jan 2011
Reviewed by Steve Litchfield at