Digital zoom comes to the iPhone, well sort of

Yesterday saw the release of Camera Zoom from developer KendiTech, which promises to give your iPhone up to 4x real-time digital zoom. Unlike other photo apps that offer a digital zoom feature, Camera Zoom is available via the AppStore and does not require your iPhone to be jailbroken.

Features:

• Up to 4x digital zoom
• Realtime zooming camera preview
• Adjusts photo to best quality automatically
• Built-in camera roll photos preview
• Customize zoom slider's position
• Fullscreen shutter (optional, tap anywhere to take pictures)
• Ask before saving a photo (optional)

So how does it work?

Launch the app and you go straight to the apps camera interface where you can choose to leave the settings on default, or tweak them to meet your personal preferences, by touching the "i" and setting the position of the zoom slider, or turning on/off Full Screen Shutter, Ask Before Saving or Full Screen Slider.

Once you have set your preferred preferances you are now ready to use the app, and this is a simple process. I chose to set the zoom slider at the bottom of the screen and enable Full Screen Shutter (tap anywhere to take photo).

Taking a photo with these settings could not be any easier, frame your shot, zoom in, and tap the screen to take the photo, and that's it, the photo is automatically saved to your album and your ready to take the next shot. The whole process is very quick and smooth, with the results viewed on the iPhone looking quite impressive.

The end results

Sadly as with any digital zoom there is always going to be some sort of compremise, and this app is no exception. The end results at all zoom ratios are saved at 800 x 600 pixels, which at least keeps some continuity, however does reduce the cameras megapixel, which becomes very apparent when any photo taken is viewed back on a computer, as you will see major pixelation and noise, which for me was unacceptable.

Above: Photo taken without any zoom appliedAbove: Photo taken with 4x zoom. Notice the increased pixelation and noiseOverall this is an interesting app, that when Apple releases its next generation iPhone with improved megapixel could prove to be very useful, but for now this app will sit in the background on my iPhone waiting for improvements to both the app (output image size and reduced pixelation/noise) and the iPhone's camera (increased megapixel).

AppStore Link: Camera Zoom - Price £0.59 ($.99)