If there's one comparison I keep getting asked for, it's putting the cameras of the Nokia N8 and Lumia 920 up against each other. And for good reason - the N8 is now two years old and those on contracts, in particular, are wondering if now is the time to jump from the End Of Life Symbian to the latest Windows Phone 8, buoyed up by the hope of 'PureView' photos from the 920's camera. Here, then, is a blow by blow real world photo shootout between the two phones, aided by a rough and ready scoring system, just to try and keep things objective.
Never let it be said that I let good article ideas wither on the vine. Drawing on a piece I did for the N8 and E7 a year or so ago (running Symbian Anna at the time), here's my top 10 battery saving measures that can be employed by anyone with a Nokia 808 PureView (or indeed a 701 or even a Belle-Refreshed N8/E7!) In extreme cases (or using my 'No. 10' tip), you can easily double battery life, easily getting two full days, perhaps even three days, of use on a single charge.
Hopefully Nokia 808 PureView owners will already have seen and digested my generic Top 12 tips for taking better photos on your Nokia N8 (and similar camera phones) - all good pointers and I do summarise these below. But I also wanted to pass on ten tips for getting better photos that are specific to the 808. In truth, it's actually hard to take a bad photo with the Nokia 808 PureView, but the advice below will still prove useful.
Nokia has been consistently at the top of the camera phone tree for a decade now, but many people were curious about Nokia's choice of using 5 megapixels as the default capture resolution for the 2012 Nokia 808 PureView. The claim is that the pixels themselves are 'pure' and that most people don't need more than 5mp, but I wanted to quantify the 808's claims in the best way I know possible - by comparing directly with Nokia's own 5mp Xenon-equipped imaging flagship from five years ago, the N82. Let the shoot out commence!
In part 1 of this feature, I introduced the concept of ISO adjustment and showed some rather extreme examples to illustrate how the apparent sensitivity of the sensor is increased. In this, part 2, I take a couple of real world use cases and look closely at the difference ISO adjustment makes. Although demonstrated on the 808 here, the feature is applicable to any good camera phone that allows you to manually override the ISO setting.
We've all thought it at one time or another. Faced with a Symbian smartphone which is coping, but not quite as lightning fast as when we first had it, faced with a system disk (C:) which is edging the wrong side of 50MB free, and feeling guilty for the dozens of freeware and trial applications you installed to try out (and then removed again), the temptation is to think "What would I gain in performance and resources if I were to factory reset and then sync my data back on?". Other valid questions are "Is it more efficient to completely re-lay the firmware rather than simply resetting?". And, most drastically, "if I were to perform (gulp) the emergency hard reset sequence to wipe C: completely, would I lose important modules and be up the proverbial creek without a paddle?" All of which I, hopefully, answer below, along with a healthy caveat or three!
The big question, the thing everyone (around here) wants to know. How does the Nokia PureView 'phase 2' camera in the Windows Phone 8-powered Lumia 920 compare to that in the 'phase 1' camera unit in the Symbian-powered Nokia 808? In the seven comparisons below, Rafe and I try to answer the question, and throw in comparisons with the Lumia 900 and HTC One X camera at the same time, where appropriate. This feature represents our 'first look' at the 920 hardware - there will be formal review parts coming your way very shortly, including a broader look at its camera in all modes and settings.
File this under 'middle of the night musings', but it's a question I often ask myself. 'How far could I go back in Symbian history and still have a device which filled all my needs today in 2012?' After all, there are some functions which (e.g.) the 2007 Nokia N82 does a heck of a lot better than 90% of today's oh-so-droppable, oh-so-expensive touch-slab smartphones, albeit with a less obviously pleasing UI. But how far could I go back? At what point does the antiquity of the hardware and software get in the way?
You'll already have seen how I'd been experimenting with battery swapping by putting the N8's BL-4D cell into the Nokia 808 as a spare for the BV-4D that the 808 comes with? I suggested at the time that the reverse might be a good idea, i.e. putting the higher capacity, higher (nominal) voltage BV-4D into the N8, as an ultimate battery upgrade, perhaps replacing an ailing, 2 year old cell with one that has more juice than the original did when new. Here, I show how to do exactly that and report on any stats and caveats I notice along the way.
With this direct comparison of the Nokia E7 and N950 'developer' device I don't think I've ever so badly wanted to combine two handsets, picking the best attributes of each - especially galling when you consider that there's no reason whatsoever why Nokia couldn't in fact have done this. For example, three of the E7's acknowledged weaknesses - totally sealed battery, EDoF camera and easily muffled speaker, are addressed head on in the Meego-powered N950, yet you can't buy the latter for love nor money. But one my 'head to heads' should prove instructive, not least to indicate what might have been, should a different designer have been at work on the E7 project...
