There are all kinds of reasons you’d want to hit up your local Verizon store and pick up a Motorola Droid X, but today we’re just going to focus on one of the lesser-mentioned camera features known as Panorama Assist. Its easy to see how a specs-sheet filled with mentions of a 4.3-inch display, GPS, 8-megapixel camera, and HDMI-out could overshadow a feature like Panorama Assist, so we thought it would be nice to show you what it looks like in a video demo.
The Droid X camera is impressive on its own, of that there’s no doubt. The dedicated camera shutter button, shod in an attention-grabbing shade of Verizon Red, focuses the lens with a half press. Depress the button all the way down and you take a picture. The camera offers settings that allow you to choose from a variety of shooting scenes – scenes like Sunset, Landscape, Macro, etc. You can even choose different shooting modes – Single Shot mode, Multi-shot mode, and the Panorama Assist mode that we’re focusing on here.
So, what does the Panorama Assist mode on the Motorola Droid X actually do? Well, it assists you taking panoramic shots. Once enabled, the Droid X guides you through a series of six panning shots and then automatically stitches them together to create a seamless panoramic image. All you have to do is snap the first pic and then carefully pan the camera sideways. The Droid X detects the panning motion and automatically snaps the next picture when it “sees” that you’ve reached the edge of your last shot. You can force the panoramic shot to cut itself short by depressing the shutter button mid-sequence. A little “frame guide” helps you align the shots as the X analyzes your field of view for alignment points. You can choose to pan sideways or up-and-down (if you’re trying to take a vertical panorama of a tall building, or something like that).
Once you’ve captured six images in sequence, the Motorola Droid X analyzes the images and performs some voodoo-like rejiggering of the pictures to create a single picture. You can shoThe result is darn impressive. More so if you can manage to pivot the camera around a single point and maintain a consistent shot-angle. You may notice some aberrations and visual artifacts (jagged or curved lines), but that’s the price you pay for automatic panorama shots. We don’t think it’s a big enough problem to worry about.
The video below should give you a better idea for how this process works. Excuse the wind noise and glare in the video. Outdoor video shoots can be quite difficult in San Francisco. Below is the end result of Panorama Assist.
Still not sure about which smartphone to buy? Check out our full Verizon Motorola Droid X review here, then compare it with this summer’s hottest superphones in our Superphone Shootout here.
REVIEW: Verizon Motorola Droid X – Is this the Droid you’re looking for?
SHOOTOUT: IntoMobile’s Summer Superphone Shootout – Galaxy S, Droid Incredible, iPhone 4, EVO 4G