22 June 2011

N9 Is Proved To Be World's Fastest Camera
Smartphone With Shortest Startup & Latency Time

Besides the great industrial design and body made from a single piece of polycarbonate that flows seamlessly into beautiful curved glass, an eight-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and continious autofocus will be one of the key selling points of the new first company's inaugural device powered with MeeGo software.

The 8-megapixel Carl Zeiss autofocus sensor, wide-angle lens, HD-quality video capture and large lens aperture enable great camera performance even in lowlighting conditions which makes the Nokia N9 one of the best camera-phones ever produced.

The good folks over at official Nokia's Conversations blog sat down Nokia N9 Product Manager, Jens Wilke to talk about camera and reveal some more details on the camera features, what makes it stand out of the crowd and why you’re going to enjoy it!

Since lot of camera phone users have missed enough photo opportunities and special moments and therefore Nokia has clearly taken large steps to reduce the amount of time it takes for a camera to turn on and according to Jens Wilke, Nokia N9 is the fastest image-capturing phone on the market!

Nokia N9 is capable to run camera software, start the viewfinder, focus object and process the photo in less than 3 seconds which is three seconds faster than Apple’s iPhone 4, 8.3 seconds faster than HTC’s HD7, 5.8 seconds faster than Samsung’s Galaxy II and is even fater calssic Canon’s point-and-shoot camera, Powershot S95.

Here is the complete interview:

Nokia Conversations: We know the Nokia N9 has an 8-megapixel camera, but what makes it better than any other 8-megapixel camera?

Jens Wilke: Well, the Nokia N9 camera has Carl Zeiss optics and it’s not a label we’re allowed to just stick on any phone. Once we’ve created the camera and perfected the software, we send them (Carl Zeiss) the test images. Only once the image quality has passed their tests can we use their name – they were really pleased with the results of this camera.

NC: We see you’ve removed the hard key on the side of the phone that’s normally used for taking photos. How would someone go about taking photos now?

JW: Now, when somebody loads up the camera, the camera key is located on the screen. This is what’s called a soft key.

NC: So how does focus work now? Half pressing a hard key would usually do that job.

JW: The Nokia N9 has what we call continuous auto focusing. Whenever you want to take a photo or film something, the Nokia N9 is constantly looking for a subject and adjusts the focus. When it’s in focus, the box on the screen turns to blue, letting you know you’re ready to take the shot. Also, tapping the screen in a certain area will concentrate the phone’s focus on that area.

Jens continues from here to explain the speed of the camera.

JW: Once you press the on-screen camera key, the image is taken immediately. It’s the fastest image-capturing phone on the market. In order to take a photo, a series of events must occur: the camera is turned on, viewfinder is ready, focus on the subject and the image is captured. On the Nokia N9, this all happens in 2.6 seconds – much faster than our competitors. The HTC HD7 does all this in 8.3 seconds, the Samsung i5500 Galaxy 5 takes 5.8 seconds and the Apple iPhone 4 does this in 3 seconds. We’ve made sure the camera experience is as smooth and as fast as possible.

NC: Tell us a bit about the specs and features of the camera.

JW: The camera resolution measures: 3248 x 2448 pixels for 4:3 ratio, 3248 x 2160 for 3:2 and 3552 x 2000 for 16:9. There’s digital zoom up to four times and the camera focus range is from 10 cm to infinity. And for filming, the video recording frame rate is 30 fps.

Feature-wise, there’s the continuous auto focus I’ve already mentioned, geotagging, dual-LED flash, automatic motion blur reduction, face detection and exposure settings of various types.

NC: What happens after you’ve taken a photo. What can you do with the image?

JW: The Nokia N9 has something called non-destructive photo editing which lets you edit a photo, with a way of reversing all the edits should you change your mind. A first in mobile phones. Then we have the option to share your photos to online services, such as Facebook, Flickr, Picasa or even using the built in NFC for device to device transfer.