Point-and-shoot cameras are practically extinct these days now that every new phone on the planet has a camera built right in. This makes the smartphone market highly competitive, because the camera specs and features are a big selling point.

Your Samsung Galaxy S3 actually has a pretty nice 8 megapixel camera, and the stock camera app comes preloaded with a bunch of cool features, like filters, panorama, best face, and smile shot.

However, your 8MP camera can be put to better use with the help of third-party camera apps with more features.

To add a few more to you photographic arsenal, ditch the stock camera app and check out A Better Camera. It’s basically a combination of a bunch of different camera apps offered by the developer, Almalence, all rolled into one.

The app has a nice-looking UI with standard features like burst, self-timer, and low light, but also adds some new, more advanced features similar to the ones on the Samsung Galaxy S4, like object removal, sequence mode, and group shot.

All-in-all, the app has 12 features and camera modes including: Burst, Night, Object, Panorama, Self-Timer, HDR, Pre-shot, Sequence, Single- Shot, Expo, Video, and Group Shot.

A Better Camera’s Settings

In the Settings menu for A Better Camera, you can change general settings as well as tweak each of the camera modes. The options include, changing the countdown settings for the Self-timer, adding or subtracting the amount of people in a Group Shot, or the number of images in a Sequence photo.

A Better Camera’s Best Features

In my opinion, the coolest features are Object Removal, Group Shot, and Panorama. Object Removal allows you to take a photo and remove an unwanted image or portion of an image.

I did have a some trouble getting Object Removal to work the way I wanted (sometimes the image wouldn’t be completely removed), but it works pretty good overall. Could definitely be improved though.

Group Shot gives the option to capture the best image of everyone in a group shot. After taking a series of group photos, you will be able to combine the images and get the best photo of everyone.

While, the GS3 does have a Panorama mode, A Better Camera uses a bit of augmented reality to help you take the photo. The area flashes red where you need to aim the camera and turns green once the photo is taken, somewhat similar to the Photo Sphere mode in the stock Google camera.

It works just as well as the stock app, but the augmented reality of having your previous image floating is pretty cool.

It’s too bad these features are only available for a limited amount of photos. In order to use these “premium” features indefinitely, you will have to unlock the premium version.

Unlocking The “Premium Features”

You can access the premium features “buy” page in the Settings menu. People that already have Almalence’s HDR Camera+ and HD Panorama+ will not need to purchase those items again. Those two items will already be unlocked for you.

You can unlock each feature individually or you can unlock all the premium features (HDR mode, High-res Panorama, Group Shot, and Object Removal) for $5.95. Unless you are a Android photographer or simply hate the stock camera app on the GS3, I think that’s pretty pricey. A Better Camera is good, but not good enough to shell out that kind of money.

Now, if you like free things, then this GS4 camera and gallery for your GS3 may be a better option. Plus you’ll get to use Photo Sphere.