28 July 2009

Nokia N86 Camera Review:
Nokia N86 vs SE C905 vs Sony DSC-T10

Dear Symbian Freaks, once again, good day (night?) everyone. :-)

As promised this is the sequel to the my first part of the N86 review. I’m sorry for the delay in the article, but I wanted to take my time using all 3 cameras to get pictures of almost every situation possible, and I think I have. I have ended up with almost 700 MB worth of media, and after lots of filtering and removing redundant situations, we’re down to 245 MB.

PLEASE don’t read to the middle of the article and jump out with any conclusions on any of the cameras, read slowly, look carefully and I will do my best to draw a good conclusion.

Pre-Introduction: Ovi Share

All of the pictures and videos you’ll see during the course of this article are hosted on my Ovi Share site. Ovi Share is an excellent free image/video hosting service by offered by Nokia (even for non-Nokia users).

What you get is unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth and a massive 100 MB limit for any given file size (imagine a 100 MB photo!). You can even upload multiple files, folders and subfolders at once. It also provides nice embeddable image slideshows.

The only limitation you might face is the 2 GB monthly upload limit, but I can’t complain, can I?

By the way, I’m not saying this to suck up to Nokia or anything, but I like the service a lot, and it only required my already existing Ovi ID. Check this article for an excellent comparison between the different image hosting solutions.

Introduction

Why do you think I’m doing a separate and detailed camera review on the N86? Why do you think I’m comparing it to a real point-and-shoot digital camera (and a good one at that)?

Please read on to get the spirit of this article and to understand the point of view I’m standing at while doing this comparison. If you don’t like lengthy reading you can skip the introduction.

Well, here goes the story (you love stories, don’t you?), years ago when I was still phone-less, there were mono-chrome phones everywhere, Ericsson was still doing it’s own phones, Sony also had a model or two (my brother owned one), and suddenly there was a “Sony Ericsson” phone, just like that, at least that’s what I felt then.

One of the most iconic phones Sony Ericsson ever produced was the T68i, it featured the first color screen with an amazing (then) 256 colors and 101x80 pixels, it also featured the first bluetooth connectivity option, T9 in SMS, changeable wallpapers, customizable monophonic ringtones, etc…

And most importantly, it has got a camera, not as you know it today but it was an add-on that snapped to the phone’s port, it took photos with ridiculous resolutions: QQQVGA 80x60 up to VGA 640x480, it was damn expensive at almost $240 then and most importantly people bought it as a proof to their technological savviness.

Up from there cameras became available in more phones, we were stuck with the VGA resolution for a while until the Nokia 6630 appeared with beautiful looking 1.3 MP photos, and then came the king of the camera phones, the best imaging phone ever at it’s time, the Sony Ericsson K750i.

It sported the first 2MP camera in a phone (apart from the Sharp 902) and more importantly (gasp!) auto-focus and a macro-mode that both worked extremely well. I still remember reading Eldar’s review and being very impressed with it, I was very jealous of my friends who were able to get one, this was the first phone that people considered had a proper camera, from then and onwards forums were filled with the arguments about which is better, buying a separate camera or a phone with a good camera?

Keep with me, we’re getting near where we want to, as I was saying, ever since then people were wondering about the possibility of a camera phone replacing a real digital camera, and the answer was always the same: NO! No phone camera can match the quality of a standard digital camera. This was the belief I always had ever since.

The K800i arrived with 3.2 MP and a xenon flash, and the answer was still the same, the N73 with it’s stunning photo quality, same answer! The K850i and the N95 with 5MP cameras (and a xenon flash for the Sony Ericsson), same answer! Even the amazing N82 with the first Nokia xenon flash, still the same answer. This answer however was convincing because it explained that the small sensors and the sub par optics in the phones can never be good enough to compare to a real camera.

Then came the Samsung Innov8 with the first 8 MP camera that captured stunning photos but was sometimes beaten (color reproduction wise) by the N95/N82. Following the Innov8 directly was the Sony Ericsson C905 with it’s 8 MP sensor and dual flash (LED/Xenon), it was destined to be a great camera phone, or wasn’t it? I remember reading Eldar’s review on the prototype C905 he had, and that he said it used a tuned-down version of the Innov8’s 8 MP sensor so that Samsung keeps the good quality to themselves. I was disappointed.
Surprisingly though when the retail version of the C905 appeared, it surprised everyone, it sported a totally new sensor and people were raving about the quality of it’s camera, but I believed the answer was still the same, no phone camera can ever get near a real camera.

Now we finally come to the part that leads to the rest of the review, as some might know I usually have a Sony Ericsson phone and a Nokia phone since I’m leading a dual life ;-), I use my Sony Ericsson phone during work (and no, I’m not working for Sony Ericsson) and my Nokia for the rest of the day and on vacations, and I have recently traded my W705 for a C905.

A few days later an idea popped in my head, why not compare my digital camera to the C905? And while at it, why not throw in my N95 8GB and E71 too? This is when I received my first shock, almost all of the photos taken by the C905 looked better on the screen than my digital camera captures. I thought something must be wrong, a phone can never beat a camera, but everyone who saw the photos confirmed this. And on that basis, in one of my recent trips with my workmates I took the C905 as my main camera, it also had 8 GB in comparison to my Sony’s expensive 2 GB Pro Duo memory stick.

I was both happy and sad by these news, I was happy because finally I lived to see a phone camera that beat a real one, add to that I always had it with me so I can take pictures anytime anywhere without carrying around my camera. What saddened me though is that I felt my camera was dead, all of it’s shininess, glamour and our relationship suddenly died, and worst of all, it was beaten by a phone.

Now here comes the review, once I received the N86 with it’s 8 MP goodness and shiny TIPA “Best Mobile Imaging Device” Award I decided I must redo my original photo shoot, and include the N86 in the process to see how it fares against the other two, this is when I started taking LOTS of photos and looking closely at each one until I got to know what’s what and who’s who. So let’s rock-n-roll, shall we?

Hardware

At first glance you can see that these are two black, shiny, high-end devices. The N86 is 0.6 mm shorter but noticeably heavier and with more of it’s weight in the top part of the slider (the display part) which feels like it’s going to topple over, however I got used to it in a couple of days.

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Looking at the back side, the C905 reveals nothing except a shutter similarly looking to the Sony T-Series Cybershot lineup. The N86 has a smaller cover and both flash LEDs are exposed, I had no problems whatsoever with both camera covers.

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I had a strange glitch with the N86’s camera, once I opened the camera cover and the camera application started up normally but the viewfinder was all black, I needed to close the cover and open it again for the camera to work, this has happened to me twice. In the second time upon close inspection I found that the mechanical shutter didn’t open, but I think this is a software issue that can be solved in the next firmware update.

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Now if you turn both phones on their sides, you’ll immediately notice that the C905 has two more buttons, one for switching between picture/video modes and the other one for opening the gallery (similar to the N95). You can also notice that the C905 takes lots of clues from Sony’s Cybershot digital cameras, look at the shot below for similarities between the C905 and my Sony DSC-T10. By the way, the “C” in the “C905” stands for “Cybershot”, you can see it written on the camera cover.

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Once you fire up both cameras you can see another similarity between the C905 and Sony’s Cybershot digital cameras, while on the N86 you have to use the D-Pad to navigate the camera toolbar, switch modes and change settings, the C905 uses 6 dedicated shortcut buttons to quickly access the Macro Mode, Flash Mode, Timer, Exposure, Scene and Camera Modes. They all light up in a cool blue light once the camera is running. The shutter button also lights up in blue.

Here are some pictures, compare closely these shortcut buttons with the camera shortcuts.

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Display

As you already know the N86 sports an OLED display which is awesome, pictures look gorgeous on it, it has a richer colors and better viewing angles than normal phones like my C905.

You will notice that the N86 display colors look a bit on the warm side.
No matter how hard I tried to capture comparative pictures of both displays, I failed, pictures don’t do the OLED screen any justice, you must see the difference in real life to really appreciate it.

Below are some pictures that will show the warmth in the N86 colors and the superior viewing angle.

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When the screen is turned off, you can notice that the N86 has a fairly reflective screen, while the C905 is completely dark, I have always liked how it looks when like this.

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What really bugged me with the N86’s awesome disply is it’s near invisibility under direct sun light , they must find some work around to solve this, since most of my pictures were taken outdoors in sun light.

Again I wasn’t able to show you the massive difference between the N86’s display and the C905, but I did my best and shot both photos with the brightness on it’s highest setting in both phones and with exactly the same angle in relation to the sun. Needless to say, the digital camera has an amazing screen that no matter how much sun light there is, it’s always highly visible and it doesn’t even loose the colors, that said you can increase it’s brightness too, but I never needed to.

Sun Visibility C905	Nokia N86 8MP
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