Why can't Apple have controls for Exposure, White Balance, Scenes, and the like in their camera software. The only thing you can turn on and off on their Camera is HDR and the Flash for the most part. You cannot bypass their camera software tinkering witih your images - and in some cases the results are less than great.
Again, it depends on your requirements.
Editing ATM...
1. Low light image. Dark Room with only small blue lights above the animals. No flash photography was allowed in the room. Have fun on an iPhone 4 or 4S in this room. Used Night Time mode in the stock camera software. No editing was done to the image, period:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-...AAAAACAg/8touJ0GeQRg/s800/20120922_113547.jpg
2. Outdoor on the train. No editing, period:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-...AAAAACAg/l20O2vYTC1U/s800/20120728_115158.jpg
3. Outdoor on a very sunny day. No editing, period:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-...AAAAACAg/T07zjk2hmUk/s800/20120909_134524.jpg
4. Indoors dubious lighting. No editing at all.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-...AAAAACAg/oFK2RFilWaM/s800/20121019_140755.jpg
Look at the edges of that picture and compare it to the iPhone 4 image, and even most of the images from the DNA, even the resized images (these should display resized, I think, I'm using PWA to host them). There is a lot less noise there. Colors are on point. White balance is practically flawless, and an iPhone 4 or 4S default camera app would die trying to get a usable image of that snake without using a flash, but an HTC or Samsung device with a Night Time mode should not have too many issues. Even if flash was usable, it would ruin the image because the glass would reflect so much light back at the camera...
You don't need to use Auto-Fix to get a decent image out of this phone (at least mine), but clearly (as demonstrated above), the image looks substantially better when a good piece of software can be used to adjust the levels. An already good camera looks great. I was simply stating that comparing raw jpeg output from a Galaxy/HTC smartphone with - practically speaking - edited output form an iPhone isn't a 1:1 comparison.
And yes, there are programs that can batch edit photos, or you can Auto-Upload to DropBox, do it on a PC, and still have them all available to you on your phone when you need it there... It's really not hard if you know what you're doing.
The question is, why do you people not have an Apple iPhone?!
Lastly, why does anyone who dares to say anything positive about the iPhone feel the need to label themselves as an Apple Hater. Are people here really that susceptible to peer pressure from random internet forum personas?
Apple's devices have competitive optice and their software trickery is rather ingenious from a mass consumer point of view. I've never said anything other. But I think people are really overestimating the quality of their camera simply because they're bitter they got an HTC phone, which is a rather bad choice if you care that much about the camera on your phone. In any case, at least it's not a Motorola...
Personally, as someone who uses the crap out of my camera I wouldn't waste money on any HTC phone. I have Gigabytes of images I took with my Skyrocket so don't assume those I posted are best of best images. There are probably 300 other images I've snapped with it in all sorts of conditions that are equal or better quality. This phone's camera performs fairly consistently.