Nokia 5800 XpressMusic - Widescreen video capture and Stills camera test

[slitchfield]

Following on from Rafe's detailed (p)review articles on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (we labelled them 'preview' because the firmware wasn't final), I've been testing a 5800 with production (7th Dec 2008) firmware, specifically looking at video and photo capture. We'll have much more on this first S60 5th Edition handset in the coming weeks, of course, but see the example widescreen footage and embedded photos below.

Read on in the full article.

[DevilsRejection]

Looking forward to watching the phones show in widescreen, this came out a lot better than I was expecting.

Nice to hear more info and tests on this phone because im still waiting on mine to be delivered

[demowayne]

Same here. STILL waiting for mine to come from Hong Kong. I'm happy to see the video and Images are coming out OK as i'l coming from the 5mp N95. I have to admit though I mostly have the camera set to a lower setting to save having to edit them before use on the web. Because of this I don't think the 3.2mp in the 5800 will hamper me at all. HURRY UP EBAY PEOPLE!

[djbriandowling]

yeah im coming from a n95 too, my ebay company i ordered from is in the uk E Cell Global. It took them 5 days to process the order and when they gave me a tracking id it didnt work. they wont reply to any of my emails from yesterday so im getting worried

On monday im going to the claims departmend if there is no emails from them of sign that the package moved in there royal mail service

[sapporobaby]

Hey Steve,

Good (p)review or view or article.

I am too am running production firmware on mine. Had it for about 8 days and I have to say too that the camera is a bit weak but in sunlight, the images are not bad. I do think that Nokia will fix this in the coming f/w upgrades. It was like this with the N85. Its f/w was quite poor as well and they seem to have tweaked it a bit to get better performance.

One thing that troubles me is that Nokia is releasing phones without providing support for them, i.e. no Ovi support for the N85, or the 5800. No Nokia Mail support, no Mac support ( you and I did discuss how Nokia silently released that NMT upgrade ), as well as other services. It looks like they are focusing on phone releases as opposed to entire Eco-System releases.

Nice. Please I wan't your opinion of its videorecording quality in comparison to Xperia X1i

Is it just me or does the camera software now perform video stabilization ? On all previous phone models whenever the camera is moved the image has this strange shaking effect.

[sapporobaby]

I do not have an X1 so I can not compare. Also it does not have stabilization that I can find. Bottom line, as Steve says, it is adequate. This is not your main photography/video, device nor was it meant to be. If you are looking for something like that, wait until the N97 arrives. This is a pretty decent all around device. I use it over my iPhone as well as my N85 and I am satisfied.

Please upload the original video files before it was converted to youtube. I'm interested to examine the unmodified quality.
thanks.

[slitchfield]

Quality isn't detectably different. I took EXTREME measures to make sure that YouTube didn't degrade things. Note the use of the high quality version in the embedding in the AAS page etc.

[djbriandowling]

i've ordered the phone from a uk company on ebay. i was very worried that i was getting screwed but after 5 days to process the order and ship and its taken another 5 days for the tracking id to finally show where my phone is i can just sit back and wait, hopefully tomorrow or tuesday.

I wont be using it as my prime number. that will always be on my n95

P.s I do love the comment someone said that they'd use it over there iphone. That wouldnt be hard Lol

[Hih]

Still pictures are utterly bad.

nice review! however there is one question for which i cant seem to find an answer anywhere, and i'd be very happy if you could help me: if i took a picture of a text (the page of a book, a handwritten note), does the camera focus well enough so i would be able to read the text later? This is very important for me (i'm a student and i sometimes carry a camera along to take photos of pages of books in the library for example, so i definitely want to buy a phone that has a GOOD camera installed) Has anyone tried this? any answers/guesses are welcome! Thank you!