Despite my recent comments in our review of the Nokia N93, this latest 'multimedia computer' is very much head and shoulders above anything else we've seen, in terms of video picture quality. But I wanted to demonstrate this quantatively, as I think most people will be shocked at the differences between the different video recording specs.
I took a short clip of the same scene on the Nokia 6630 (a typical smartphone, recording in .3gp format at 176 by 144 pixels, 15 fps), the Nokia N70 (the first smartphone to have CIF-resolution video recording, 352 by 288 pixels, 15fps), the Nokia N90 (similar spec to the N70 but with Carl Zeiss optics) and the Nokia N93 (640 by 480 pixels, 30 fps). In each case, I then took a random screen grab from the clip.
Here's the full scene I was capturing:
To demonstrate the change in quality, I blew up the same area (around the house number, 22) for each device:
Nokia 6630:
Nokia N70:
Nokia N90:
Nokia N93:
To be fair, there are no real surprises here, but the appalling quality of the 3gp video capture on the 6630, in common with 98% of all other smartphones on the market, makes a very stark contrast to the more acceptable detail in the Nseries-made videos.