23 April 2007

It's not necessary 2B perfect 2B famous!

The orientation sensor was a nice surprise, can’t tell you how surprised I was when I’ve discovered that it rotates portrait photos so they appear correctly oriented in gallery. I have not even seen this is in some more expensive digital cameras.

Not sure about the sensor type, (usually it’s a small metal ball in a curved tube) but after few weeks with N95 I can say that sensor is very well implemented, it doesn’t only recognize difference between the portrait and landscape mode, it also registers rotation of the 180 or 270 degrees and therefore no matter in what position phone is, photo will be correctly oriented. This sensor actually detects which side of the phone is up and rotates the photo on the right side.

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For example you can turn phone 180º to get trigger on the bottom but photo will not be upside down in the gallery because sensor will recognize that and turn the photo in right position automatically and it is simply great although sometimes soft or sensor fails to detect right position and turns image upside down but it doesn’t happen very often, just a few times so far and I took more than 1000 photos. Also, I’m really curious why Nokia doesn’t use this sensor to switch the interface orientation as well!? It would be useful at least in camera mode, it would be much easier to use the cam soft in portrait mode and after all we would know that sensors works fine and that photo will oriented correctly after taking.

Panorama, good lighting conditions again.. . .
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That’s basically it, don’t know what else to say here, maybe only to mention something that I would like to see on upcoming models. You see, I would like to see some more functionality

CAMERA HARDWARE VIDEO

*click to watch it

to the numeric keypad that is completely useless in the camera mode. I mean, we have lot of keys that can be used as the fast shortcuts to most used features and settings, for example pressing on key 1 could change the camera mode, key 2 could be shortcut to change the flash mode, key 3 for macro mode, key 4 for… And so on, and so on…

MACRO
Misc
Animals
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The 2nd thing is already mentioned side key that is used as gallery shortcut. It works fine and it allows fast gallery access straight from the camera soft but in my personal opinion it should be used for fast gallery closing and switching back to the camera soft which isn’t case and instead of the simple press on this key we have to few times hit back soft key to get back to the camera soft and take another photo.

misc
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Video recorder

It is undeniably true that the Nokia N95, together with N93(i) has best video recorder among the mobile phones at the moment. It is capable of recording video in DVD-like quality with resolution that goes up to VGA (640x480) at up to 30 fps which is simply impressive. I’ve tried but it is hard to find the phone that has even similar quality video recorder and from that point of view N93/N95 video recording possibilities are simply amazing.

PLEASE don’t be hesitate to ask anything

Unfortunately the audio part isn’t as good as on the N93. You see, Nokia N93 has two dedicated ultra sensitive microphones that are separated by phone body, very well positioned and oriented to get the optimal stereo sound.

Nokia N93i also has pair of microphones but result isn’t as impressive mainly because the bad position on the top of the camera module, one too close to each other for capturing outstanding stereo sound.

Finally, Nokia N95 has the worst possible solution, instead of dedicated microphones it uses the standard calling related microphone that is positioned on the bottom part of the phone and oriented to the right in landscape/camera mode. All these results with pretty ugly background noise and not so good sound, this noise is even more irritating then zoom motor noise on N93 videos.

Of course, in specification you’ll find that phone supports digital stereo recording but it is just a bad marketing thing, one channel is one channel and there is no way to transfer into stereo.

VIDEO
N95	N93

While the audio part can’t be compared with N93(i) the picture quality is almost the same and there is no doubt that you’ll be satisfied with the video part. Last but not less important it seems that N95 is capable to produce less noisy videos in lower lighting conditions, in comparison to N93 of course will the result is comparable to N93i.

Working with the recorder is quite easy, it provides recording in the automatic and night mode but there is no way to activate the led flash in the video recording mode?!? Can you believe it!? I can’t tell you how surprised I am with this issue?! What’s the point of putting led flash if it can’t be used in video recording mode, it simply doesn’t make any sense, I have always thought that Nokia is forcing led flash instead of xenon just because of the video recorder?!?

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The recorded video looks extremely and surprisingly good on the phone screen but it is mainly due to the compression to the lower QVGA resolution. It looks nice on the phone screen and even on the TV, but on PC, on real resolution you won’t be so much impressed with the result, especially in lower lighting conditions, recorder really requires a lot of light for proper work but it is expectable after all.

Video samples:

*right click and save target as.. ..

However, I have to say it is far away from DVD quality, just like the Nokia claims it is just a DVD like video recorder with accent on LIKE! It does not even meet semi-professional needs, but still it’s the best video recorder in mobile world after n93(i), it’s always in your pocket with you and it’s main advantage of this feature because it allows you to capture situation that usually disappears until you bring your camcorder from home or car in best situation.

Video samples:

*right click and save target as.. ..

I’m not movie director and I still have to improve my video recording skills and I am not so good in recording as in still photography, but anyway, below you can find some samples that will help you to make a clear conclusion about the quality of the built in video recorder. There is also another direct quality comparison among the N93 and N95, hope you’ll like it.

Video samples:

*right click and save target as.. ..

Video samples:

*right click and save target as.. ..

*Will upload one low lighting comparison videos
in next few days.. . .

.:[ Nokia N95 - Technical Specifications ]:.