Sony Xperia Ion Autumnal photograph

I've really like the camera on Sony/Sony Ericsson phones - I had an Xperia Arc S before this Xperia Ion. Both times Sony have made huge claims about the quality of their cameras - which aren't quite justified. At a pixel level, the Xperia Ion is about as good as the Samsung Omnia II was, but it has 12MP rather than 5MP so pictures are quite noticeably better at a photograph level. I am using the Ion's camera at 16:9 aspect ratio where its "only" 9MP so pictures fit the screen. I have been surprised by the Arc S and the Ion in low light - sure, they're bad pictures/pixels compared to (say) the RX100 let alone compared to a DSLR, but they're not unusable bad (which is, I suppose, very good indeed for a cameraphone!). Sony's sweep panorama works, but doesn't stitch as well as doing it by hand and stitching with something like Microsoft's ICE and sweep panorama limits you to the same maximum number of pixels as the camera takes normally where as ICE (or iOS 6's panorama) stitches have more pixels. The Ion does have a noticeable projecting ridge around the lens - keeps it off things and possibly stops some edge lit flare (see iPhone 4 and 5...) getting in - the Ion has also surprised me with doing a decent job of shooting into the light!

So - pretty happy with the camera: people who see pictures taken by the Ion on its screen are very impressed - I tend to think that's the screen somewhat more than the camera

Sophie