Nokia N95 in camera bug shocker...

[slitchfield]

Surely, I thought, gazing at the Nokia N95 on my desk. Surely, its camera can't really be as bad as I and other 'power users' have been making it? Indeed it's not, and it's all due to a bug in the N95 firmware.... read on below!

Read on in the full article.

[slitchfield]

Even more interesting, the same bug is present in the Nokia E90's camera - looks like it's embedded in the generic FP1 camera interface code....

NOKIA - over to you!!!!

Steve

[Ratkat]

You can just reset it to normal yourself using the Sharpness option in the toolbar, granted it would be better if the default was normal though.

[Slartibartfast]

It's a phone!

A "whopper" would be dropping calls for no reason (one pace forward the P990 there I fancy).

There are days when I expect this site to start giving us tips on nude B&W still life shoots before being merged with "SLR Monthly".

regards,

Slart.

p.s. Feel free to complain about the PIM apps - even though it's not a filofax either! ;-)

[Ratkat]

It's not a 'Phone'........it's what 'Computers have Become'

I get a new N95 in some days, so to avoid this problem, i should stay away from the sharpness-settings? That's all?

[slitchfield]

No, stay away from ANY of the scene settings. And I defend my reporting of this, the 5 megapixel camera is THE main bullet point feature of the N95 and this bug arguably ruins it.

Steve
PS. I can confirm, thankfully, that you won't be seeing Rafe, Ewan and I in the nude, in black and white or colour....

[krisse]

"It's a phone! A "whopper" would be dropping calls for no reason"

I'd agree if this was a reasonably priced phone, but the N95 costs 700 euros and the E90 costs 900 euros so I think people who put down that sort of money are entitled to expect bug-free camera software.

[Ratkat]

Steve, I can't see how you can say it 'ruins it'

90% of users will probably never touch the scene settings anyway as most use it for quick snaps

There are however two easy solutions.

1: Reset the 'Sharpness Setting' manually after you have a selected a scene setting.

2: Exit the Camera app, next time you enter it will be back to 'Normal Sharpness'


Krisse, I think in the N95's case, I am far more worried about its 'lack of operating ram' only 20mb at start up, which to be honest makes several of the key features including Web Browsing, PDF Reading, Image Editing etc etc, especially while trying to multi-task near impossible.
You'd have thought Nokia would have learnt its lession with the N80, E70 etc etc but it didn't.

No-one really expects a 'Camera-Phone' to replace a dedicated Camera, if thats what you want go and spend a couple of hundred quid (or less) on a 5mp digi camera it will take far better pics than a N95 or E90.

[krisse]

"'lack of operating ram' only 20mb at start up... You'd have thought Nokia would have learnt its lession with the N80, E70 etc etc but it didn't."

Actually, from talking to a developer at great length about this subject, I don't think it's about "learning lessons". There is no easy answer to the RAM problem, you cannot just add more of it and expect that to solve everything.

Apparently, the more RAM you add (as in RAM, not internal memory) the more power it draws from the phone even when there are no programs occupying it. The N95's battery life is already very precarious, so adding more RAM might make it ridiculously short even for people who don't use lots of apps at once (which I'm guessing is actually most people).

As I understand it, if you have phones with less features than the N95, for example the N76, they can afford to have more RAM because they have more power to spare, but they only have power to spare because they've given up certain features.

It's the same fundamental problem for RAM as for all other features: there's nothing technically impossible about making the processors much faster, the screen much bigger and brighter etc but all these things draw power and battery technology just isn't keeping up with the demands being placed on it. A direct example of this is Sony's PlayStation Portable, where Sony imposed artificial caps on the speed of the processor because if games used it fully then the battery life would turn to mush.

As someone on the Nokia blogs put it, mobile technology is developing exponentially but battery technology is only developing linearly.

That's why UMPCs have absolutely dreadful battery lives, they go all out for specs but completely ignore their purpose as a portable device to be used away from fixed power sources. In one interview with the Register recently, a UMPC maker flatly refused to even discuss their product's battery life.

Until a viable replacement for Lithium batteries arrives, we're stuck with these kinds of compromise solutions because a drained device has less functionality than a compromised device.

How does it look with nude B&W still life shoots at various sharpness settings? Could you perform some tests on the skin tone of Kate Moss? Regarding the comment about insufficient RAM, the Nokia Maemo devices have the option of using a flash card as an extension of built-in operating RAM (swap). Here are some Linux applications for Nokias: tuxmobil dot org/phones_linux_nokia_other.html

[Ratkat]

Comment: ......a drained device has less functionality than a compromised device

You can always charge a drained device or carry a spare battery, unfortuantly we can't add more RAM to a N95.

The point is where do you make the compromise, adding for example an extra 20mb of RAM would make small diference to battery life but would increase functionality, I'm not just talking Multi-Tasking here either.

Take for example the Web-Browser, at present if you are browsing a web page and you click on a link that opens in a new window, nine times out of ten the original window will automatically close. That is not a compromise, on the N95 that is a basic function rendered useless by a lack of RAM.

[jukkaeklund]

Steve, you might be on to something. I'll make sure this gets checked.

Note that Sharpness is always reset when camera app is started again.

[khoolhandz]

I'm having problem with my N95 too! I just got it last week.

Look at the pic and there is pixilated in purple and I don't know how to get rid of it.

ttp://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l162/khoolhandz/06072007002.jpg

[gustavosoares]

hi! interesting post...

i´ve recently made my firmware upgrade to v 12.0.013 and fortunatly I haven´t face this problem...

One thing that I hadn´t figure it out is to change the default behaviour of the camera when I open the lens... I hate those automatic scene mode and everytime I use the camera I have to switch to the user pre-defined scene... that´s sucks! Do you know if it is possible to change this behavious?

cheers,
Gustavo