Microsoft has released a Beta version of its Lumia Camera Windows Phone app for select Lumia smartphone owners in limited regions. As with most beta versions of apps, its purpose is most likely to test features on a smaller group of users before implementing them in the main version. Unfortunately, the app description doesn’t go into detail as to what exactly is being tested.
A common complaint of the Lumia Camera app is its speed and image quality so it’s probably safe to assume that both these issues are something that’s being worked on for future iterations. Personally I’d love to see them streamline the UI to make it easier to understand for the average consumer. The current implementation of numerous completely separate Lumia apps to access basic photo and editing functions is needlessly convoluted and time-consuming with very little reason given for not consolidating them into the main Lumia Camera app. As the app stands right now, even attempting to do basic image cropping pulls up a list of other Lumia apps to use.
Another area where the Lumia Camera app could improve is in highlighting its own features that make it such a powerful app. A recent update added 4K video capture capability to select Windows Phones but there’s currently no mention of “4K” anywhere within the app itself and the option is hidden within the video settings as a 2160p option instead of the more widely used term that most are familiar with. There’s also the new Rich Capture feature that takes a photo at multiple exposures and allows the user to select the best shot afterwards. In preparation for this article, I decided to revisit this feature that I hadn’t used in months and it took me over 15 minutes to find it in the app due to a complete absence of Rich Capture information in the app settings or UI (In case you’re wondering, you activate it by pressing the magic wand icon in the upper menu).
What improvements would you like to see in the Windows Phone Lumia Camera app? Let us know in the comments below!
Further reading: Lumia, Lumia Camera, Microsoft, Windows Phone, Windows Phone apps
