When it comes to camera performance in smartphones, Nokia still has a superior lead. However, since Nokia's N series success still relies heavily on camera performance, it was a little disturbing to not find the Nokia N97 in tip-top shape in the camera department earlier this year. We would go as far as saying that the company made a huge mistake by placing this phone in the N series category in stead of creating a new prosumer brand for this type of device. Let's hope that the Finnish manufacturer will find its mobile heart again now that the "rule the Web 2.0 world" strategy has been discarded.
Perhaps the most important addition to our list below is the recently released iPhone 3GS. If you hear your friends bragging about their iPhone camera capabilities, you should probably listen to them. It won't kill any imaging product obviously, but under the best circumstances the camera is more than the typical "added bonus" you find on most smartphones. For more in-depth camera coverage of the iPhone 3GS and the rest of the smartphones in this round-up, check out our score comparison and image samples below:
Camera comparison
(Based on infoSync test results) |
| Phone |
Image |
Video |
Management |
Specs |
| Nokia N85 |
Very Good |
Very Good |
Very Good |
- 5MP sensor
- VGA video
- Dual LED flash
- Auto Focus
- 8GB storage |
| Nokia N97 |
Good |
Good |
Good |
- 5MP sensor
- VGA video
- Dual LED flash
- Auto Focus
- 32GB storage |
| iPhone 3GS |
Good |
Good |
Very Good |
- 3MP sensor
- VGA video
- Auto Focus
- 32GB storage |
| T-Mobile G1 |
Good |
Good |
Very Good |
- 3MP sensor
- CIF video
- Auto Focus
- 1GB storage |
| S/E Xperia X1 |
Good |
Good |
Very Good |
- 3MP sensor
- QVGA video
- Auto Focus
- 2GB storage |
| Graphics by infoSync World |
We're always ready to be skeptical of cameraphone lenses, but the camera on our Nokia N85 review unit allayed our fears and took some fantastic pictures, among the best we've seen from a cameraphone. The 5-megapixel, auto focus shooter springs to life when you snap open the lens cover, a nice start that helped keep the lens safe and clean. We weren't thrilled with the dual LED flash. Two LEDs didn't make for twice the picture quality in low light conditions. However, under good lighting, our pictures came out looking great, vibrant and sharp, with perfectly accurate colors and just enough detail. These are pics good enough for printing. Check out our favorite samples below.
Snowy Town Square
Bark Close-Up
Self Portrait
Lady Bug and Fingerprints
Wildflower
Wildflower and Lady Bug
Rusted Lock
We'd like some more camera features. Uploading photos was easy, and the phone comes with presets to upload directly to Flickr, Ovi and other services. Uploads were a bit sluggish, and we could only upload one pic at a time, but otherwise uploading went smoothly. Still, we wish there were more in-camera features. We think this great camera could make some great panoramas, and we wish there were more cool shooting features in that veign.
Video recording quality was also very good. The phone can record DVD quality videos, meaning VGA (640 by 480 pixels) resolution at 30fps. In our tests, videos actually looked very good. Motion was smooth, with none of the watery effects we've seen on inferior cams. Colors looked accurate, if a bit bland, and the camcorder did a nice job handling backlighting and more complex lighting situations. Also, we liked having plenty of memory on board to handle long recording times.
After being so impressed by the camera on the Nokia N85, we were let down by the 5-megapixel shooter on the Nokia N97. Pictures still looked very good on this phone. Colors were usually accurate and vibrant, and we were able to achieve some nice depth of field effects from the auto focus lens. Low light handling was quite poor, though, and the dual LED flash did very little to help the situation. Even under the best outdoor lighting, pictures that weren't close-ups looked messy at full crop, like an oil painting rather than a richly detailed shot. Under more dim lighting, detail disappears entirely, white balance jumps ship and noice problems take over. Check out our sample pics below for the best of what we shot during our test period.
Orchid Close-Up
Orchid with Dual LED flash
Mottled Landscape
Flower in Hand
Self Portrait
Flower and Wood
Video recording performance on our Nokia N97 review unit wasn't bad. The phone can record video at either full VGA resolution, or it can crop the vertical a bit to 640 by 360 pixels to match the screen's resolution. Either way, videos were a bit blocky and fuzzy-looking, but far superior to the dreck available on most cameraphones. The Nokia N97, like all Nokia Nseries phones, also has some nice uploading options. We had no trouble uploading our pics to our Flickr site, though we wish the phone could handle a queue instead of making us wait through each upload to transfer the next.
More than any other feature on the phone, the hobbled camera on the older iPhone models received the most complaints. With the new Apple iPhone 3GS, the device is finally capable of recording video, at VGA resolution no less at an impressive 30fps. Videos looked pretty good. Not great, as poor light management still hurt some exposures. Also, the camera focuses when you start to record a video, then keeps the same focal distance, so if you start at a macro level, you better stick with close-ups or your video will be blurry. We like the simple video editing feature on the iPhone 3GS. Basically, the phone gives you a timeline with screengrabs from the video you just recorded, and you can move the start and stop times to trim the video down to just the right moment. There are cameras and phones that can do more, but none that offer a simple editor that is so easy to use.
The camera has also seen some significant improvements. The Apple iPhone 3GS now sports a 3-megapixel shooter with auto focus, a feature we've been asking for. The iPhone 3GS even uses the touch focus feature we've been enjoying on other advanced smartphones, like the HTC Touch Diamond 2. In practice, this worked very nicely. The touchscreen adjusts not only the focus, but also automatically adjusts exposure and white balance depending on where you tap. This helped fix some photos that might have otherwise been washed out by harsh backlight. The iPhone's camera does a nice job with most of the automated settings. We found images to be very rich and saturated in color, we imagine this is getting a boost in post-processing. Blur was still an issue, especially under low-light situations, or up close, where the phone switches to macro mode. Under the best circumstances, our iPhone 3GS review unit produced some stunning images, but in most cases, images were just average.
Still, for both the camcorder and camera features, Apple includes no settings whatsoever, and this is frustrating. We'd like more control over white balance, sensitivity and other imaging settings. We'd also like more camera features, like a panorama mode and some scene specific modes. We'd also like to see a flash, especially a nice, bright Xenon bulb, to help in dark settings. Most of all, though, we want a shutter button; a real, two-stage shutter so we can autofocus easily. Pressing the onscreen button while holding the camera steady for a macro was a feat. Trying the same for a self-portrait seemed more like plain old luck. Check out our image samples below for the best shots we took in our test period.
Sunflowers
Wildflowers
Koosh Ball Flowers
Windy Self Portrait
Landscape, Focus on Water Tower
Landscape, Focus on Wood Pallet
Wood and Flowers
Indoor Orchids Close-Up
Perhaps the biggest surprise for us with the T-Mobile G1 was with the quality of the phone's camera. This is one of the best cameraphones we've ever used, and it produces images that can compete with name-branded lenses attached to dedicated camera phones. Colors were rich and vibrant, perhaps a bit too saturated but to a pleasant effect. The auto focus also helped significantly, and details seemed sharp in most images. We're usually very critical of cameraphone imaging, but the T-Mobile G1 is the real deal, and it produces images with its 3-megapixel sensor that we can call print-worthy.
Flowers
It wasn't just the eye-popping red in this picture that impressed us. The individual petals are distinct and detailed, as well.
Staring dog
The dog was unfortunately over-exposed in this bright daylight shot. But we're almost willing to forgive, considering the detail in the blacktop road and the blades of grass.
Self portrait
Colors looked great in this shot, though we were a bit blurry. Still, judging from the image, it looks as though the autofocus simply concentrated on the pine needles behind us, which came out more clear and distinct than we did. A self-portrait mirror would have helped. More camera settings would be even better.
Fall foliage
More fall foliage
Two foliage shots that show off just how much color the T-Mobile G1 manages to eke out of a scene. The blues in the sky are almost too rich, but we'll take them, considering how sharp these images look.
The Google Android Cupcake update also finally brings video recording to the T-Mobile G1. This was more useful for MMS messaging, as the phone records in a low resolution (CIF), 3GP format, and not in MP4.
The camera on the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 was okay, and the images it produced could be clean and clear, or blurry and unusable. At first glance the camera's feature set seems exceedingly impressive. Besides the 3.2-megapixel sensor, the camera has auto focus with a 2-stage shutter button, a touch focus option that lets you tap on the portion of the picture you want in focus, and plenty of other camera tweaks. Unfortunately, we found this camera's focus to be way off, whether we were using the full auto, the touch focus or even the macro mode. Touch focus seemed to never take the picture we were after, but even stranger are the issues we had getting a clean self portrait. The camera kept messing with our head, literally. It didn't help that we've had obnoxiously grey weather for the entire testing period, but we also tried this camera under bright afternoon light and our studio lamps.
Rainy day
You can see where things are going to go wrong in this rainy shot. Colors are bleeding when they're bright, but noise is kept to a minimum, even in the low-light spots.
Iron fence
Here's where our problems with touch focus begin. The second spike on the iron fence should have been in focus in this shot. Instead, as we'll see most of the time, it's really the background that get the attention.
Night shot
Noise is kept on the down-low in this shot of a street lamp at night. Still, even with a stabilized camera it's tough to make out the guys climbing the scaffolding behind the lamp post.
Blustery sunrise
Lamp posts
It was a foggy morning, so we'll forgive the blur and some of the bleeding lamps. Colors look good, too. We wish there was more detail, and the pictures fall apart at full zoom, but they look good fit on the screen, nonetheless.
eBay shot
Things look pretty good on the lower half of the card, but at the top, the important Asst. numbers are blurred, making this one a bust for eBay use.
Self portrait outdoors
Self portrait indoors
Who knows what was happening here. In the top photo, we had to double check to make sure touch focus wasn't accidentally leading the camera astray, but actually full auto focus was engaged. In the second photo, it's hard to believe but this is the most clear picture we got out of a series of 5 consecutive tries. It's hard not to take personal offense.
Little dude macro test
We were hoping to get up closer for more detail, but this is as close as we could get before the camera's focus fell apart.
Touch focus tree branch
The camera again fails the touch focus test, missing the fuzzy end of the tree branch.
Evergreen
The camera really came through in this shot, delivering a nice, dynamic look with the cool colors of the overcast sky.
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