Nokia Unveils The N97

[Admiral Valdemar]

Finally, something to succeed the N95/96 and offer more than the Nokia Tube.

Too bad it won't be out to next bloody June, so I hear.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

No Xenon flash = I could give a shit less

[Zac Naloen]

Do Nokia hate the xenon flash or something?


They haven't used it any of their new models :S

[Admiral Valdemar]

I do find that odd given the N95 family have such a flash and it's not like they can't fit it in or that it means it eats into battery life.

I also wonder why the haptic interface isn't multitouch with force feedback like the Nokia Tube and BlackBerry Storm. The proper keyboard probably makes that redundant anyway. I hate typing anything on the iPhone or Tocco.

[Zac Naloen]

The N95 family has an LED flash, isn't it the N73 with the Xenon flash?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Battery life for the new phones is atrocious. Are you sure you want to cut the life even less?

[Zac Naloen]

well it's only a drain if you are using the camera extensively.

If you are using your phone regularly for photography, i'd rather take better photographs over battery life.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The last Nokia phone to sport Xenon flash was the N82, which is what I have currently. It's a great phone, but I do have some gripes with it, and would look forward to upgrading to something like this N97, but the lack of the xenon is a total dealbreaker. I want a phone that will eliminate the need to carry a separate camera, and anything lacking xenon just won't cut it.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I disagree with the need for the xenon flash requirement. My phone's LED flash is ample for the kind of close range snaps you'd need it for. While a xenon would be better, it is not like you can't do good shots with the alternative that, hopefully, can also act as a torch too. I was under the impression the original N95 had such a flash like the 82, model, but I guess Nokia saw it as being more of a drain than a benefit.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The last Nokia phone to sport Xenon flash was the N82, which is what I have currently. It's a great phone, but I do have some gripes with it, and would look forward to upgrading to something like this N97, but the lack of the xenon is a total dealbreaker. I want a phone that will eliminate the need to carry a separate camera, and anything lacking xenon just won't cut it.

Why would you want a phone that not only has inferior optics, and no decent zoom?

[Stark]

I've never had a phone with a decent quality camera (even high MP ratings always seem to have really bad imaging chips) and the only thing I ever take pictures of with my phone is titties anyway. Do many people use them as a complete camera replacement? What's the quality like on the N82?

[The Grim Squeaker]

I've never had a phone with a decent quality camera (even high MP ratings always seem to have really bad imaging chips) and the only thing I ever take pictures of with my phone is titties anyway. Do many people use them as a complete camera replacement? What's the quality like on the N82?

Megapixels are NOT Image quality, it's only a measure of how much you can enlarge the photo for printing purposes (or to pixel peep).
www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm
www.nytimes.com/2007/02/08/technology/08pogue.html
A higher MP count (all other things being equal) reduces the camera sensor's (light) sensitivity, dynamic range and whatnot.
I have a N5610 with a 3.2 MP camera, and sadly stories told to me about it being a back-up camera were foul filthy lies. Some companies have good camera phones, I've heard great things about the cybershot series.

[Stark]

No shit dickless, that's why I JUST FUCKING SAID 'even high MP ratings always seem to have really bad imaging chips'. Thanks for failing to read. This is pretty much my question; do any cameraphones actually have decent cameras, or are they just crappy imagers with the highest marketing bullet-point they can add?

I've actually seen really bad quality images from Cybershots, but they change the range so frequently that I have no idea what current models are like.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I've never had a phone with a decent quality camera (even high MP ratings always seem to have really bad imaging chips) and the only thing I ever take pictures of with my phone is titties anyway. Do many people use them as a complete camera replacement? What's the quality like on the N82?

I can't speak for the N82, but my N95 8GB is easily on par with the Sony Cybershot camera my dad got a few years ago that was a 5.1 MP deal with optical zoom. The only thing lacking is an optical zoom, since digital zoom is essentially as useful as a chocolate fireguard, but otherwise I use my mobile's camera for all my needs (I've never had a requirement for a dedicated digicam). I know a few years back Samsung made a camera-phone with a 10 MP chipset and a 10X optical zoom, however, it was merely a prototype concept and the bulge at one end for the mechanism and lens wasn't sexy.

In fact, the reason I expect Nokia aren't going above 5 MP while others are going to 8 MP like Sony and Samsung, is no doubt down to the limiting factor being the lens now. You can't offer any appreciable quality gain to justify the price of a denser CCD when even with a Carl Zeiss you won't improve on something that doesn't have an optical zoom function. It's not like any camera phone is meant to replace, say, a guy using a 35 mm SLR with a long angle detachable for snapping illicit government deals.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

N82 has essentially the same camera as the N95 8GB, just slightly better and with xenon flash. Picture quality is roughly equivalent to a mid-low range ultracompact standalone. There's was a noticeable drop in quality from my SD600, but the pictures still look pretty good and they're way past the "acceptable quality" level for my purposes. It's not meant to replace a DSLR, after all, just to be a device you always have with you that takes good looking pictures.

[Zac Naloen]

A Visual demonstration of the N95's capabilities is in order.

The N95 can take photo's like this...


and this



But does this



In low light.

"Real" cameras handled that evening much better due to having a real flash.

[The Grim Squeaker]

"Real" cameras handled that evening much better due to having a real flash.

Er, no, it's more due to them having the capability to crank up the ISO (light sensitivity - means you don't even need the flash) by a number of stops with a far lower degredation of image quality/noise.

Also, did you take both pictures? That first one is a Beauty .

[Admiral Valdemar]

Night shots can be good if you have the right settings. For a lot of shots, a xenon flash wouldn't make as much difference as you'd expect if you haven't tinkered with the light levels or focus setting. I found some shots were totally obscure in auto mode, but when I adjusted the light level setting, turned the flash off and used a custom night mode, I could see stuff. And it wasn't blurred to hell from minor movement to boot, which I hate about night shots.

[Stark]

If he even took them. How do high-quality cameraphones deal with the bad stability you get? And again, how many people do this? I know eight trillion people with expensive cameraphones, and it's just a marketing bullet-point. Most people can't even frame a shot properly, so why would they care about camera quality beyond 'isn't noisy as shit'?

And it makes me giggle that if you blow them up to actual 5MP size they look like shit, but that's just post-shot image resizing artefacts.

[Admiral Valdemar]

You can get phones with image stability software in them, I always have that on with my N95 and it generally works so long as you're not taking a picture on a dodgem whilst having a seizure. It's better for the video in my mind, since that can get quite jerky when recording on such a small device.

Still, given some people are entirely hopeless at taking any shots, you get cameras today from Nikon that not only stabilise the picture, but adjust the colours, contrast and automatically lock on to peoples' faces, because it's apparent too many Facebook pics were taken by blind retards.

[Ypoknons]

I find high-MP phone cameras to be useful at recording things, like a good dish I ate, something cute I saw, but not really for serious photography. That I haven't done for years, anyways. Xenons are a bit better, but LEDs can be used for videos at night. Twin-LED is coming close to usable, I think, since phone Xenons aren't all strong either.

I might swap my Tilt (HTC Kaiser AT&T version) for a N97, since the 3MP here is shit (worse than my N73 by far), flashless. The N97 has a nice high-res screen, decent OS and I would hate to lose the tilting screen.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

This is what a low-light shot looks like on the N82 with the Xenon. As you can see, it's a night-and-day difference from the N95's LED flash.

[Ypoknons]

I know they're quite alright at that range, but since I don't have a dual LED and a Xenon flash to compare, I don't have a valid argument on my hands do I? That said, The N97 has two LEDs rather than the N95's one - have you checked how the N78 or N96 perform with two instead of one LED?

[Ypoknons]

Here's a good comparison for deciding whether a dual LED flash is good enough or not:
http://zomgitscj.blogspot.com/2008/11/d ... und-2.html

The N82's xenon is better of course - it preserves more color as well as being bright, of course; the dual LED however isn't quite as useless as a single. The N97 has the same dual LED flash system, I assume.

N96:


N82:

[Stargate Nerd]

I can't speak for the N82, but my N95 8GB is easily on par with the Sony Cybershot camera my dad got a few years ago that was a 5.1 MP deal with optical zoom. The only thing lacking is an optical zoom, since digital zoom is essentially as useful as a chocolate fireguard, but otherwise I use my mobile's camera for all my needs (I've never had a requirement for a dedicated digicam). I know a few years back Samsung made a camera-phone with a 10 MP chipset and a 10X optical zoom, however, it was merely a prototype concept and the bulge at one end for the mechanism and lens wasn't sexy.

Not to step on your toes, but that Cybershot Camera your dad had must have been a POS then.

I've had and have camera phones in the 1mp, 2mp, 3.2mp and 5mp ranges. Each of the phones was at it's time either the best camera phone or close. And no matter if it was the Sharp TM150 (1mp), the SE K750 (2mp, first camera phone with autofocus) or SE K800 (3mp, af, Xenon) the pictures taken, while beautiful on their own, weren't close to pictures taken by a 2mp Canon compact.

Right now I'm using the Motorola Zine Zn5 with 5mps and Xenon flash. According to websites like Mobile Review and Mobile Burn, this is most usable cell phone camera yet. And it still doesn't produce pictures on par with the old 2mp Canon, not to mention a 8mp Nikon.