The Nokia N8: Imaging champion with a five year legacy

Published by Steve Litchfield at 11:41 UTC, April 27th 2010

This morning's announcement of the Nokia N8 marks, for me, the end point of a five year journey that Nokia has taken us on in the smartphone world. Yes, other manufacturers pop up in this field every now and then, but Nokia's path has been more consistent. Read on for more, including my thoughts on how the N8 finally replaces every previous smartphone camera champion. Xenon flash, stereo audio capture, intelligent digital zoom and more...

Starting out in the smartphone world with the Nokia 9500, I had to put up with VGA stills from its camera. That's right, double-take needed, I said VGA. 640 by 480 pixels. I tried to kid myself that these snaps were acceptable, but putting them up on a desktop monitor showed the blocky, ugly truth. Moving through the Sony Ericsson P800, which wasn't much better, I migrated to the Nokia 6630, the start of my modern allegiance to S60. A surprisingly good (for its time) 1.3 megapixel camera, I finally had a phone which could produce stills which didn't look too bad on the 15" monitor of the time, nor when printed at 6" by 4". These stills represented the starting point for my smartphone convergence journey to totally replace my Olympus standalone 'compact' camera (and Sony camcorder). With today's N8 announcement, we've come a long way....!

Now, don't get the wrong impression, I'm as much against megapixels for their own sake as the next person. I even wrote a whole series here on All About Symbian debunking a set of popular camera phone myths. But there has been a progression in all areas of smartphone cameras, championed by Nokia, over the years. At each stage, the designers had to take on the current state of the art in miniature camera optics and sensors, balancing their attributes (including cost) in the context of a smartphone that could be profitably sold, reliable and (hopefully) inspiring.

This Nokia arguably managed with a sequence of devices that all made their mark in different ways:

In table form above, the specification bumps are quite obvious, but by now you'll be appreciating that great photos are about more than simply having higher numbers. Looking at the new N8, I have some delights and some concerns:

Delights:

• Xenon flash - the only camera flash technology worthy of the word 'flash' - the last couple of years of poor LED-lit party shots can be safely forgotten - see my feature on this
  
  
• Stereo audio recording (one mike on front, one on back - more on this later in the week)
   
• HD video capture. Watch this space for video samples.
   
• The same intelligent digital zoom in video mode as the N86 - no blockiness - almost as good as optical zoom.
  
  
• Large OLED screen - vivid viewfinding and photo viewing in most light conditions - not perfect in bright sunlight, but not as bad as plain TFT screens
     

Concerns:

• Exposed camera glass - a mechanical protector will be sorely missed - see my feature
     
• 12 megapixel maximum resolution (meaning small sensor pixels inside the device)
      
• Fixed aperture lens - though, in fairness, the use of Xenon flash will mean that getting more light onto the sensor in dim conditions is unlikely to be a huge problem. The N8 will have to work harder in very bright sunlight, to avoid over-exposure.
     

Five delights and three concerns then. Unlike some other sites on the web, I'm going to reserve judgement on the N8 until I've tested a production device with production software (and thus camera algorithms) - still another 3 or 4 months away.

Of the camera champions listed above, there are a huge number of people still clinging to the N82 and N86 - can the N8 tempt them from their 2008/2009 favourite? I don't expect images from the N8 to be that much better than the best from each of those two units - but I do expect it to roll many of the strengths of each into the one hardware choice. Now you really won't have to choose between Xenon flash or higher number of megapixels, between dim LCD screen (that, admittedly, did rather well in sunlight) and bright OLED, you can opt for the N8 and get (mostly) the best of both worlds, plus all the modern niceties of Nokia and Symbian^3 - and with a comparatively small number of caveats.

It's early days for the N8 - it has only just been announced. But it's fair to say that I'm very excited about testing it in the depths of the (hopefully long and hot) UK summer this year.

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 27 April 2010

Nokia's demo video showing HD video capture

News Discussion

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hardeep1singh The way Nokia has delayed the device to ensure that the user experience is complete, it seems they won't be releasing a device with a beta firmware this time.

Agreed, plus many of the probs before were due to severe lack of ram. This one should be ok.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hardeep1singh The way Nokia has delayed the device to ensure that the user experience is complete, it seems they won't be releasing a device with a beta firmware this time.

You can't be serious. No offense mate but this is what Nokia does. Release and repair. Release and repair. Before you go off on an iPhone and Android screed, I will agree that they too release updates but their updates are not to repair such extensively flawed phones/firmware as Nokia. The difference between an Android/iPhone out of box experience when compared to Nokia is night and day. Android and Apple have the support eco-system already in place while Nokia has to scramble to add support to Ovi, or to add the odd bits to get the phone to properly work with other computer OS's.

Another key point is the hardware/software myth. You see many on this site to the moderators screaming about hardware, hardware, hardware, but at the end of the day it is the software that makes a difference. Apple and Android understand this, but it is continually lost on Nokia. You get better and better hardware that is continually let down by inadequate software. A classic example is the attempt to just throw a touch UI on top of Symbian. It was and still remains a disaster. It looks cheap and shows that Nokia still does not get it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by miki69 First N8 12MP shots!! http://conversations.nokia.com/2010/...-n8-untouched/ AMAZING!

Look at the image gallery of N85:
http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n85-review-297p7.php
Do these pictures look bad?

The problem comes when you start taking pictures in a not-so-perfect lighting condition. This is where quality of lens and sensor become important. I am very sure that N8, like other phones, will perform poorly in low light.
Having a camera on a phone is great because you have the option of always capturing the moment even the best mobile phone camera can't match the pics of the cheapest point and shoots (like a $95 Canon A480)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered Look at the image gallery of N85: http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n85-review-297p7.php Do these pictures look bad? The problem comes when you start taking pictures in a not-so-perfect lighting condition. This is where quality of lens and sensor become important. I am very sure that N8, like other phones, will perform poorly in low light. Having a camera on a phone is great because you have the option of always capturing the moment even the best mobile phone camera can't match the pics of the cheapest point and shoots (like a $95 Canon A480)

The N73, N85 and N95 were all dire for indoors photography.

However, the good old SE W810 with the plugin xenon flash easily equalled any point and shoot I owned at the time. SE K800 was terrible, and apparently the N82 had a fantastic xenon flash.

The N8 has both LED (for video) and xenon (for stills), which could well be the best of both world. Pictures that have been shown by Nokia do indeed seem to be very good, but we'll have to wait and see what they're like in the real world.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hardeep1singh What other phones? The other Nokia with a Xenon is N82 and it takes amazing pics even in pitch dark conditions. How can you be so sure when the actual facts prove otherwise?

I have seen the photographs taken by N82. If the distance of the subject is less than 3 meters then its xenon flash is effective indeed, otherwise, it takes ordinary pictures at low light (if you compare it with point and shoot cameras). If you compare it with other phones then it is better.
What I am trying to say is that a cameraphone cannot compete with even a cheap point and shoot.
I am not saying that cameraphones are bad. Since you always carry a phone, you always have a camera. That’s convenient...great...but if you think that N8 will take snaps similar to what miki69 had posted in normal lighting conditions also then you are dreaming.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered 680 MHz TI OMAP processor with 256 MB of RAM and accelerated Open gl 2. Looks promising.

Hardware, hardware, hardware !!!!!

Can you get it through your head? If the hardware is good but the OS is crap (which Nokia has a talent for delivering) then it is all moot. You have to have GREAT software to go with the hardware to get a GREAT user experience.

Wake up and stop listening to the apologists for Nokia. See how the phone works when it is in the wild.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered Hardware, hardware, hardware !!!!! Can you get it through your head? If the hardware is good but the OS is crap (which Nokia has a talent for delivering) then it is all moot. You have to have GREAT software to go with the hardware to get a GREAT user experience. Wake up and stop listening to the apologists for Nokia. See how the phone works when it is in the wild.

You should do the same. At the moment the hardware specs are the only hard facts available to most of us.

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