By Todd Ogasawara on August 24, 2009 4:25 AM

HTC Touch Pro2 MPEG4 & H.264/3GPP Video Samples: Decent But Doesn’t Compare Well to Nokia N96 or iPhone 3GS

I’ve been using a Nokia N96 as my main voice phone since December. So, I’ve been spoiled by its remarkable 5 megapixel digital camera and VGA (640×480) quality video at 30 fps (frames per second).

The HTC Touch Pro2 I bought last week has a 3.2 megapixel digital camera and video recording of unspecified resolution (according to its HTC product page). They probably left it unspecified because it doesn’t compare well to Nokia’s and Apple iPhone 3GS’ 640×480 30fps video recording capability.

The Touch Pro2′s maximum video recording resolution is a relatively pitiful 352×228 (or 320×240). 352×228 is a standard known as Common Intermediate Format (CIF) that is easy to convert to either NTSC or PAL video formats. 320×240 is the familiar quarter-VGA format that is literally 25% the resolution of Nokia’s or Apple’s video recordings.

To make matters even more confusing HTC’s H.264 video recording option is really an extremely low-resolution 3GPP video format designed to create relatively tiny files for transmitting over relatively slow EDGE or 3G networks.

That said, the Touch Pro2′s video recording quality looks pretty good. And, the sound quality for the two video recording modes I tested (MPEG4 and H.264/3GPP) sounded very good to me. I was especially surprised how good the music in the second clip sounds given how far away I was standing from the live band playing outdoors in that clip.

The Touch Pro2′s lackluster video capabilities are not a showstopper. But, it does make the show less entertaining than it could have been with a 640x480x30fps video recording capability.