Name: Galaxy Fame
Brand: Samsung

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Camera

For a phone that comes in significantly cheaper than some of its higher-end rivals - such as the Samsung Galaxy Ace 2, Huawei Ascend G510, Sony Xperia J and LG Optimus L5 2 - the Samsung Galaxy Fame also packs in a 5MP rear-facing sensor, complete with a front-facing camera that was notably omitted on the latter of the aforementioned rivals.

Being able to launch the camera from the lock screen initially seems to be a major bonus, one that seems to be making its way over to many smartphone operating systems and interfaces.

The lack of internal grunt is a major problem, however. We swiped to unlock to the camera, and were given the home screen, leading us to believe that we hadn't opened the camera, but then a second later the camera opened.

This is a really frustrating problem. We've seen that it takes a few seconds on other smartphones, but it really did seem to take an age to load the camera app. That funny cat pose, baby's first steps and that pretty butterfly will have long gone before you even get the camera to focus.

The lack of a dedicated shutter button for the camera app is also an annoyance, but one that we have come to accept, since it is so often omitted on smartphone cameras.

We were very happy to find that customisable autofocus points can be selected by tapping on the screen, and we found that the volume rocker can double up as a zoom changer.

There isn't a massive level of zoom available on the Samsung Galaxy Fame - it just goes up to 2x. We know that a digital zoom is hardly worth having anyway, because it reduces the image resolution, but for those who like to use it, only zooming in to 2x is really poor.

In terms of features, the Samsung Galaxy Fame camera has just about all you would expect - a flash, image size, geotagging, three colour effects (black and white, sepia and negative), scene modes, ISO, white balance and a timer.

Generally we found that these features aren't of much use on phone cameras, tending to be for the more serious photographer - someone very unlikely to use the Samsung Galaxy Fame.

Samsung does provide different shooting modes, such as Single Shot, Panorama, Share Shot and Smile Shot. We see the Single Shot being the one you'll most frequently use, because Share Shot shares your photos via Wi-Fi direct connections (something that is only really prevalent on other Samsung Galaxy devices), and Smile Shot is dedicated for portrait pictures.