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Review: Nokia X6 Review: pt 3, Life through a Lens
Published by Ewan Spence at 23:22 UTC, January 13th 2010
Summary:
Ewan continues his multipart look at the new Nokia X6 Comes with Music. Part 1 of this review looked at the X6's externals, while part 2 was heavily critical of the core Music player and performance. In this, part 3, he looks at the X6's camera and photography functions - can even the X6 transform Ewan into photographer of the year?
Where do Nokia see the X6 in its media line up? Obviously music is going to play a large part, and we've spent some considerable time looking at the built in Music player. Next up is the media you capture yourself... photos and video.
The X6 is carrying the Carl Zeiss lens that the majority of high end Nokia phones carry, and it's a similar sized lens to that which is present on the Nokia N95. Of course, we've shown that simply chucking in this lens and a five megapixel camera aren't going to give you identical results because there are a huge number of factors that make up a good camera phone.
Luckily, Nokia have (unlike other areas of the X6) carried on the iterative process of getting a good picture, tweaking settings for sharpness and colour, and lots of arcane bits and pieces. The end result is that you can get some perfectly acceptable 'fun' pictures out of the X6 as long as you take a little bit of care [or aren't called Ewan Spence - Ed]. They're certainly as good as those from a low end standalone pocket camera, with the advantage that you're always sure to have the X6 in your pocket.
To help out in low light situations, the X6 comes with a dual LED flash. No it's not the Xenon flash that some commentators think is needed in a camera phone, but there have been huge improvements in LED flash technology and this is miles better than the original N95's single LED flash.
Video quality is also great for a pocket device, although Nokia's insistence on sticking to a maximum frame size of 640 by 480 pixels is starting look a little bit short-sighted, with HD video featuring in a number of smartphones, and available on the High Street in portable Kodak and Flip cameras. Is it vital to this phone? Strictly speaking no, but the current package is a pricey one thanks to the Comes With Music package, and at that price you'd expect to have a well specced out phone. I think HD video recording is going to have to be added into the next run of phones coming out at the end of 2010. The X6 (just) manages to get away without its inclusion.
As well as VGA at 640x480, you're also offered 640x352 resolution – almost the same pixel resolution as the X6 itself, and (handily) in the widescreen 16:9 ratio that's becoming more popular online. You can record up to 30 frames per second, and the sound is an acceptable (but not brilliant) 96kbps bitrate.
Thankfully there's no memory leak while using the camera, so the worries that I had in using the music application are not here, and I'm more than happy to trust my snaps and memories to the X6. As I said above, this is a phone that should be with you at all times. In that sense an above average phone always with you (e.g. the X6) is far better than a high quality camera you only carry occasionally.
The external camera button with two pressures, one for focus/lock and one for taking the picture, has been a feature of Nokia's design for a long time, and I'm glad to see that it is still here and working well. The preference to have the camera application brought to the foreground when you first (long) press the button means that getting to the app quickly is easy.
Classic bowl of fruit shot using the LED Flash (click through for full image)
What's not great are the rest of the controls of the camera. When you're sitting around inside, calling up the options screen (with the twelve icons) is a sensible interface, and is easy to navigate. However, there are two problems with this. The first is a small but practical one. Thanks to the capacitive screen requiring skin contact to register a touch (as opposed to a resistive screen just needing pressure), the X6 is torture to use outside in the ongoing cold weather.... needing my gloves off to take a picture of the snow might not induce frostbite but it's not something I looked forward to.
The second is an issue that all the S60 5th edition touch based phones have; the mix of two different user interface paradigms. The first is the pop up icons for settings, which in my mind is exactly what a touch phone needs. The second is the 'classic' S60 menu system, hanging off the 'Options' button. By using two ways of presenting information and changes to the user, Nokia kills any feel of a joined up device because the brain is always switching between two ways of doing things.
What could be a problem is the camera lens cover, which is left exposed to the elements. There is a raised lip around the plastic, but I doubt this is going to stop any small rough elements reaching the lens (or keys in your pocket).
The underlying processing and hardware is acceptable, but the S60 5th Edition software is yet again a kludge of menus and options held together by string code.
Once you've captured the media, you've got options to edit and touch up your creations. For your pictures, as well as altering the colour levels, brightness and contrast of your images, you have some basic clip art and the ability to add captions and annotations.
Edinburgh in the Summertime (Click through for full pic).
I liked the red eye removal option, and given my camera skills, this can prove useful. The basic video editor that I loved using on previous 3rd Edition devices is back here – via the Gallery application, you can edit each clip either to trim out a shorter clip from your raw footage taken on the camera, or to merge two video clips and add captions. You also have the option to replace the soundtrack with any music or recorded audio on your phone.
While both of these editing options are relatively basic, given the focus Nokia has placed on sharing media and interacting with networks like Facebook directly from the handset, the ability to make a few quick (if coarse) changes before you send them up to the internet is actually pretty useful. I've tended to boost the brightness and colour in quite a few images so it would be nice if these tweaks would become an automatic filter, but that would be icing on the cake.
Nokia's Share Online application is still in here, allowing you one touch uploads of your media to Flickr, Vox and Nokia's Ovi services. There have been no visible updates to this service in recent years, and like many of these services if your favourite is supported then it becomes very smooth and quick to use – which means that as a Flickr user I'm pretty happy.
As always, you have the option to email your pictures in, and most web services have an email gateway you can use as well, so there is always a fall-back. It's a pretty competent fallback as well, one that I'm happy to use. It's nice that the handful of widgets that give you out the box connections to Facebook, MySpace and other sites will also allow you to upload pictures already in the device gallery, or to take new pictures.
Just as in the Music Player, Nokia have done little more than port their existing software into the X6. Sure it might have the new capacitive screen, new physical styling and a decent bit of camera hardware for a phone of this type, but the camera software is showing its age. The editing capability is a welcome addition (actually more a return as it's similar to that which came in the original N95), but Nokia haven't really put the effort in on the software side.
It doesn't matter if this is down to a shortage of developers, a focus of resources on the next Symbian release for a new device this year, or simple mis-management, the X6 really does deserve something a little better than this. Yes it does the job, yes it will do just about what you ask of it, but you have some speed bumps along the way. For the price of the unit, I'd really expect a little more.
-- Ewan Spence, Jan 2009.
Review Discussion
I think I should make the xenon points now.
Xenon is undeniably better, how well LED is doing is besides the point, for a phone like this it is a very good point, and can be compared with past LED lights, for an imaging flagship argument it holds no ground
the argument of size to fit in a xenon is not valid the nokia 6220 classic was very thin
nokia have clearly run into some sort of competition issue? It just seems all too fishy to me that nokia have decided to pull xenon. Notice how nokia quickly without need pulled the 6220 classic and replaced it with the 6720 ( I think it's called) it's pretty much identical minus the xenon.
Once again it does not matter for most phones nokia release but since they call the n86 their flagship imaging device, complaints should be expected.
One reason the X6 is basically the same as the 5800-N97/N97mini (especially the later two) and the reason I think they have repeated the glaring hardware and software faults of the N97's is that they DO have most of their resources working on either Maemo and it's next generations or SF^3 but mostly SF^4 and related handsets. Therefore are trying to change as little on the hardware platform as possible (like leaving woeful RAM level unchanged) so they don't have to allocate extra resources to changing code on an already dead platform to bring out new handsets. I can't believe they haven't realised that the N97's and the X6 don't really cut it but have released them as interim measures on what is basically the 5800 platform (which in itself was an interim measure based on old platform) whilst they get modern generation platforms together.
Which is unfortunate for those who pay £449 for an X6 (even allowing for CWM) and those who bought into the N97 as a flagship models. They're all very poor. Nokia better pray the new iPhone isn't as good as rumours imply or their new platforms are unbelievable and they're not caught aiming at the previous generation iPhone only to be caught with their pants down by the new generation release again.
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Originally Posted by Hurlley
Oh ohh I see a xenon vs led fight starting again. Ewan you are quite right but I don't think it was worth mentioning, it's not a phone made for imaging so I wouldn't expect it.
I think I should make the xenon points now. Xenon is undeniably better, how well LED is doing is besides the point, for a phone like this it is a very good point, and can be compared with past LED lights, for an imaging flagship argument it holds no ground the argument of size to fit in a xenon is not valid the nokia 6220 classic was very thin nokia have clearly run into some sort of competition issue? It just seems all too fishy to me that nokia have decided to pull xenon. Notice how nokia quickly without need pulled the 6220 classic and replaced it with the 6720 ( I think it's called) it's pretty much identical minus the xenon. Once again it does not matter for most phones nokia release but since they call the n86 their flagship imaging device, complaints should be expected. |
Its not an imaging device, but the camera is basically a 3 year old design. Which is pretty poor, especially for the price. Also the LEDs are in the wrong place - they should be by the side or above. Not below. Putting them below tends to make pictures look a little unnatural.
The N86 didn't have Xenon due to "size". Which is a little bizarre, as the N82 isn't exactly what you'd call huge, neither are other such as the C905.
However Nokia are in dire need of something to give their range a bit of flash (excuse the poor pun). The 5530, 5800, X6, N97 and N97 mini all have the same resolution screen, same processor and same memory - the only differentiations are minor differences in other hardware, and they're charging one helluva lot for those minor differences.
I know that there is a lot more to a camera than pixel counts, but Nokias flagship has 8mp and LEDs, the SE flagship has Xenon and LED. Hellooooo Nokia, do you actually have a clue, or is your collective head still up your collective corporate back side.
I've seriously liked some of the Nokia products over the years - my N73 and N95 are still running well, but the 5800 was basically a UI disaster after what seemed to be promised from their original ideas, it seemed like a hastily put together stop gap.
I was kinda hoping that the X6 would be the one to correct some of this - sadly it really isn't.
The Nexus one has LED.
The Motorola Droid/Milestone had LED.
The flagship HTC WinMo phone (can't remember what it is called) has LED.
The X6 is a music phone. The natural choice is LED. No capacitor recharge, no high voltages, and stay-on flashight mode, less environmental and green manufacture issues (remember Nokia holds an award for green initiatives), longer life on average and more robust.
The people making these decisions are not the 0.001% of phone buyers obsessed with Xenon. They are the ones that know that the dfference xenon makes really isn't all that important to the vast majority and have very real budgetary, marketing and engineering concerns to deal with. Not just armchair evangelism and keyboard campaining.
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Originally Posted by slitchfield
"Why is the photo of the plate of fruits looking dreamy and hazy. Do you have finger grease/muck on the lens window?" Tempted to say 'Because Ewan took it', but that would be cruel, so I'll keep a tactful silence. 8-)
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
The X6 is a music phone. The natural choice is LED. No capacitor recharge, no high voltages, and stay-on flashight mode, less environmental and green manufacture issues (remember Nokia holds an award for green initiatives), longer life on average and more robust. The people making these decisions are not the 0.001% of phone buyers obsessed with Xenon. They are the ones that know that the dfference xenon makes really isn't all that important to the vast majority and have very real budgetary, marketing and engineering concerns to deal with. Not just armchair evangelism and keyboard campaining. |
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
More robust? What do you actually mean by that? Sorry but the most robust phone ever made by Nokia is the N82 (xenon), period! I would challenge anyone on that. Let do a 'drop on concrete' test or whatever. Anyway, I'm not obsessed with xenon. It's not important to me, but it's nice to have.
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The drop on concrete test should be the flash units on their own. An LED and a XENON bulb/Capacitor/High voltage coil combimnation. Which do you think is the easiest to protect?
In identical casing, LED will do best.
Seb
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Originally Posted by Ewan
It would be true, though.
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Edit: In the Edinburgh pic, there is fringing in the tree branches:o
It may be Carl Zeiss optics,but I think the lens is inferior than the N95
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Originally Posted by raffmonster
How would you rate the general durability of the X6. does it have the delicate,pliable 5530 like battery cover. I have seen the blue/red sidelining break and come off if the phone is dropped. Also the bottom physical keyboard becomes a nasty , oily mess if operated a little.
Edit: In the Edinburgh pic, there is fringing in the tree branches:o It may be Carl Zeiss optics,but I think the lens is inferior than the N95 |
| The people making these decisions are not the 0.001% of phone buyers obsessed with Xenon |
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Originally Posted by Hardeep1singh
There seems to be just one little 14 year old who hates Xenon so much that he makes it a point to jump into every xenon discussion and splatter it with stupidity all across, all this while he stays hidden behind the 'Unregistered' tag. Wake up and look at the number of comments here that support Xenon, look at the popularity of N82. People want Xenon in their cameraphones, it's proven to be better than LEDs and Nokia has till date received enough flak for not including it in their phones. That's a fact, deal with it.
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The only real problem (at least in the UK) is that the N82 wasn't really promoted, and the networks didn't appear to like it.
If it was given as an option, people would go for it like a shot. Something that can take pictures of your friends being a complete idiot out at a nightclub (something that almost no phones can do with anything like detail), and then post direct up to facebook - that'd be hugely popular.
But of course Nokia really don't seem to have a clue about the direction they want to go with anything at the moment.
Still, not as bad as SE (and Samsung), who seem to be strangely backing Symbian, WM and Android. Covering all the bases, and not necessarily covering them well.
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Originally Posted by Hardeep1singh
There seems to be just one little 14 year old who hates Xenon so much that he makes it a point to jump into every xenon discussion and splatter it with stupidity all across, all this while he stays hidden behind the 'Unregistered' tag. Wake up and look at the number of comments here that support Xenon, look at the popularity of N82. People want Xenon in their cameraphones, it's proven to be better than LEDs and Nokia has till date received enough flak for not including it in their phones. That's a fact, deal with it.
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It makes no difference whether it is unregistered or not. You still don't know me if I use my full name.
Some people want Xenon, those people are particularly voracious and noisy and attracted to forums to bleat about it But there aren't that many people who are that bothered, it's not expected for them to post about it. I see the number of comments about Xenon. Maybe 10 or so people have mentioned it. What's the size of the smartphone market? Billions?
Don't tell me, tell Apple, HTC, Motorola. If it was so simple and such an advantage, they would do it. So why don't they? I can think of a single explanation, it's not so simple and such an advantage please a few potential buyers. I've given several other reasons tha Xenon is not used in these leading phones, but your only argument back is personal insults.
You don't like to hear it but you are a small minority. It's a niche requirement.
Removing the cover from 5800 works wonders.
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Originally Posted by Artz
It seems that X6 also suffers from a badly transparent plastic cover. Steve can you please try to remove the whole back cover and make a picture. Or better if you can make two same pictures, one with and one without the cover so we can see the difference.
Removing the cover from 5800 works wonders. |
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Originally Posted by Ewan
The back cover has a cutout for the lens, so it never leaves the camera housing.
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That plastic is making pictures look blur and without contrast or good color. Really bad design. It makes a world of difference when you take out 5800 back cover and take a picture.
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Originally Posted by Artz
Yes, I see now.
That plastic is making pictures look blur and without contrast or good color. Really bad design. It makes a world of difference when you take out 5800 back cover and take a picture. |
The X6 is a different design - the lens/cover is actually built over the lens. Its no better (and effectively possibly worse) than the N95 (ie. no separate lens cover)
