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The M900's camera is a step up from the X960, offering 5 megapixels instead of 3.2. It's not bad for a WinMo handset, though not really in the same league as the likes of Sony Ericsson's C903 or Nokia's N97, though it easily stands comparison with HTC's Touch Diamond2.
It takes about four seconds to start up – not great but not bad – and offers auto exposure, three focus settings (centre, face detection and multi-zone – you can flip between these using the jog dial), anti-shake and multishot (three, five or nine pics in quick succession) options.
It can deliver a maximum still photo resolution of 2560x1920 pixels and there are effects such as sepia, greyscale, negative and mirror, four white balance settings, and a 4x digital zoom, operated by running your thumb up or down the nav pad.
FOCUS: the camera has trouble focusing, with pictures appearing washed-out
COLOURS: the camera is unable to capture what we would call 'vivid' colours
OVERALL: it's a decent effort but certainly no compact replacement
Pics taken in good light were surprisingly sharp, though light and colour balance occasionally goes awry and edging soon breaks up under magnification. The LED flash is fairly bright, but as usual, is only worth bothering with if you're within a metre or so of your subject.
Maximum video resolution is 640x480 pixels in 3GP format which drops the quality considerably, especially in anything less than excellent light, with quite a lot of noise and occasional screen lag too.
All in all, it's not a bad camera for this kind of phone, and our main problem with it was really the positioning of the shutter button, which encouraged us to keep sliding out the phone's keyboard every time we pressed it.
