02 October 2008

3.2 MPX Camera phone Battle
HTC Touch Diamond vs. Nokia N93

The HTC Touch Diamond. What a fancy name for a Windows Mobile Smart Phone. The only diamond part of the phone is on the back, where most phones have a flat back, the HTC Touch Diamond has trendy styled chiseled peaks and troughs, all in which give it a "diamond" appearance.

The LCD screen is absolutely fantastic. It is small, but still sports VGA 640 x 480 resolution. Nokia, should be ashames with its super low res 320 x 240 res screens. But this is not what we are here to talk about. Yes, the Touch Diamond sports a 3.2MP Autofocus f2.8 Camera optic. Whats a better test, than to put it against the classic N93.

In the past, HTC, and other Windows Mobile devices, have really not be very successful in the past at making any descent embedded cameras in their smart phones. Both Nokia, and Sony Ericsson have had at least a 2 year advantage in this area.

For example, while Nokia would be using 3.2MP autofocus optics on its higher end phones, the Windows mobile devices would be struggling with 1.2MP fixed focus lens designs, and the ones that did make it to 2MP, did not really do justice, with cheap lens, and extremely bad imaging sensors.

Finally though, we may have a good contender, with the Touch Diamond sporting a true 3.2MP autofocus camera.

[ HTC Touch Diamond ]	[Nokia N93 internal process]
*click to enlarge

The first thing I noticed when I picked up the HTC touch, was how small and light it was, but it was the way the unit took images that impressed me. The aufofocus box, was small and in the center. This was very much like the N93, and I have to say, this is the best thing for those who like to do fine macro work, where a larger focus box, would require multiple attempts to focus on the right subject.

Next the focus engine was fast and silent. locking onto a subject took less than 0.5 seconds. Compared to the N93 which took about at least double, and at times even longer to aquire focus lock. From the images above, we can straight away see that the HTC touch diamond has orientation sensors, so it puts the image into correct orientation. THe N93 is too archaic to do this, and as we know all newer models from N95 onwards does do this.

In terms of color, we can see both imaging units doing surprisingly, well with the Diamond pushing saturation a little more than the N93, but not excessively, so is not a bad thing. Next looking at sensor noise, we can see clearly both are struggling on this indoor shot, with the N93 exhibiting more noise artifacts than the Diamond, which although has visible noise reduction, it retains a bit of noise to try to keep the image "real" looking, rather than "water colored". Exposure wise, N93 here seems to have gotten a more accurate exposure on the face than the Diamond. Also note that the Diamond, does not have any form of LED or xenon flash.

[ HTC Touch Diamond ]	[Nokia N93 internal process]
*click to enlarge

Noth the best example here of a close up, but, we can see both units are able to capture descent detail when pushed closer to the subject. What is really noticable is how crisp the Diamond image is.

Nokia N93 image seems to look a little more alive and punchy, it is possible the Diamond is underexposing the image. Again I must mention, how fast and precise the focus engine is in the Diamond.

[ HTC Touch Diamond ]	[Nokia N93 internal process]
*click to enlarge

Lastly, and most importantly is the outdoor landscape type shot. This really tests the resolving powers of both camera optics. Straight away, we can see the N93 produces a marginally wide angle image, which is typical, as we know the N93 is deemed the wide angle king for cell camera optics in alot of cases. What is next to be seen is the resolution, even though the N93 has the wider angle shot, and hence more information to process, it seems to match very closely with the Diamond.

While the Diamond is clearly applying a considerable amount of noise reduction, the N93 is keeping the image natural, and realistic. Color wise the N93 seems to have taken the warmer approach, while the Diamond is going for a cooler color temperature effect. When we look into the background trees behind the building, it suddenly becomes apparant that the Diamond is no longer able to keep detail, and turns trees into watercolor mush!

It is not surprising, as we see this same phenomena in all later Nokia 5MP camera phones, including the N82, and the N95. N93 here, is truly showing its power to retain detail. Lastly, I thought it was interesting to see the silver corrugated iron where the "Trade" sign on top is showing fancy rainbow colour effects on the Diamond, whereas on the N93, it appears correctly as I would see it with my own eyes.

This effect is usually caused by having a weak AA filter in front of the sensor, since the weaker the AA filter, the more resolution can be extracted from the sensor. If you want to learn more about this effect, one can google "moire" and "bayer" to find out how sensors work, etc.

CONCLUSION

*click to enlarge

To conclude. I am really surprised at this HTC Diamond. I was not expecting to to perform as well as the results seen. The most amazing thing for me was the VGA screen which was used as a viewfinder for composing image capturing, as well as the very fast autofocus! With this kind of AF speed, one can capture moments as they happen without having to prefocus first or force fixed focus modes.

No doubt, that the sensor of choice although only 3.2MP is still a noisy one, and even with onboard noise reduction, noise is still visible in some areas of the image. It would have been nice to see some sort of LED illumination or xenon flash, but I understand why this may have been omitted, since the Diamond is meant to be fashionable and stylish, with smart phone capability.

Against the N93, there is not too much difference between the two in terms of image quality, the only thing the N93 really has above this phone is its wider angle lens, and its optical zoom. It does seem that N93 has had alot more work done in research and development in terms of lens coatings and clever optics from Carl Zeiss. Long live Nokia N93!

SF Review: 3.2 MPX Battle: Nokia N93 vs. HTC Touch Diamond!
Originally posted: 01.10.2008
Last Updated: 01.10.2008
Author: Bigley Ling (AKA Mazor)
Copyright: Symbian Freak 2008; all rights reserved