In the final part, number eight, of my Camera Nitty Gritty series, I look at some of the top smartphone cameras again, but this time looking at their video capture potential, covering the Nokia N82, N93, E90, the Samsing INNOV8, the Sony Ericsson K850i and the HTC TyTN II. Obviously just a snapshot of the phone video capture world but hopefully nonetheless interesting. Your comments welcome if you can add any comparisons of your own!
Read on in the full article.
Nice one Steve. I agree with you, the N93 is still the best for video in my opinion.
Here's where I nearly killed off my N93, in the first week of ownership no less!!
Of course, sadly this review also confirms just how far down the list video quality is to Nokia and most other manufacturers. I suppose it's a case of 'good enough'. Have you seen the quality of video from the 5800? It's shockingly bad...
HD will be seen in a Nokia before the end of 2009, I'm sure of it.
Interesting read. But what about additional video feautres like the Innov8's super slow-motion where it records QVGA @120fps and plays at 30fps to give you Matrix-style smooth slow motion. I know it's not unique (I believe LG's Viewty feature phone was the first to introduce this) but it's nonetheless interesting and cool IMHO.
Very nice comparison Steve!
this makes me realize how good N95 is!
but i wonder why u didn't include the new Nokia's flagship the N96..
i wanna see how bad it is compare to the others..
can u also test out the HTC Touch pro and Xperia X1?
i know this is only for symbian phones, smartphones, or feature phones..but i'm curious, since u tested the Kaiser..
@billy:
The N96 wasn't included because its current video capture is horrible. It's almost certainly a software problem though. We're waiting on Nokia to fix it!
The Touch Pro's video capture isn't brilliant. About the same level as the K850i here. I haven't tried the X1, but I suspect it's similar again.
@cirrus:
Re: super slow-mos. It's a gimmick, really, you can't (obviously) do these at full resolution. And I'd rather have VGA footage at 30fps than QVGA at 120fps.....
-Samsung Omnia has VGA video recording albeit at 15fps
-Samsung Pixon has WVGA (720X480)video recording at 30fps (!)
-Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 has VGA video recording & quasi WVGA (640x400) at 30fps
-Nokia Tube has VGA video recording & quasi WVGA (640x352) at 30fps
The Pixon video samples that I've seen are nothing short of amazing!
The n93i was the first to have focussing while shooting video, wasn't it? Would have been good if that was available to test too..
MAJOR OMISSION - Why on earth have you passed over the 6220 Classic, as this site so often does with this sort of comparison article, in favour of the more high end, flashy, pricey, NSeries and other smartphones? I mean why?
The 6620 Classic is a far more significant device than any of the NSeries - why? Because it does not advertise itself as a smartphone, and is far cheaper than an NSeries, thus making it far more appealing to far more ordinary folk who would be put off by a smartphone tag and the price of a high end device. I am willing to bet the whole AAS team a pint each that the 6220 Classic will go on to sell far more eventually than the N95 does (if it has not already).
Yet for all but the odd arguably unnecessary feature (wifi), it is an N95 in a smaller case, and yet small enough and different enough that it warrants a separate analysis, as you have with other smartphones.
AAS always lets itself down with this elitist attitude, harping on about old out of date devices that comparatively few people have (N93) and ignoring the TRUE "ultimate video smartphone" that many more consumers will actually have in their pockets - the 6220 Classic. At the very least this is reviewer bias coming out and it's unprofessional.
It wouldn't kill you to do update this article and your other recent comparisons, with a 6220 Classic section. At the moment I can't take these articles seriously.
Honestly, is anyone surprised that a device that combines the manufacturing "skills" of HTC, and Windows Mobile (i.e. the worst hardware maker with the worst phone OS), gets a 2/10? Cos they shouldn't be!
@malerocks:
"The n93i was the first to have focussing while shooting video, wasn't it? Would have been good if that was available to test too.."
Well, the early protos had it. Nokia removed it, in a crazy decision, removing the device's main USP 8-(
@unregistered. Yep, good point and if Rafe or Ewan or I had a 6220 Classic we'd have tested it. But we don't. Sorry, I did say the article was partly a 'snapshot'.
I have tested the 6220 Classic in the past and its video output was clearer than the E90's, but had some software fudges to help it achieve the resolution. The output from the N95, N82 and N93 are superior.
And, regarding the N93, the reason I keep banging on about it is because it's one of the best devices Nokia ever did and there are hundreds of thousands of N93 owners STILL waiting for a firmware upgrade to bring this device into 2008, let alone 2009. Subconsciously, I think that if I keep on mentioning it, Nokia will remember it and think 'Yeah, let's do something with the N93'. Wistful thinking?
Unregistered wrote:MAJOR OMISSION - Why on earth have you passed over the 6220 Classic, as this site so often does with this sort of comparison article, in favour of the more high end, flashy, pricey, NSeries and other smartphones? I mean why?The 6620 Classic is a far more significant device than any of the NSeries - why? Because it does not advertise itself as a smartphone, and is far cheaper than an NSeries, thus making it far more appealing to far more ordinary folk who would be put off by a smartphone tag and the price of a high end device. I am willing to bet the whole AAS team a pint each that the 6220 Classic will go on to sell far more eventually than the N95 does (if it has not already).
Yet for all but the odd arguably unnecessary feature (wifi), it is an N95 in a smaller case, and yet small enough and different enough that it warrants a separate analysis, as you have with other smartphones.
AAS always lets itself down with this elitist attitude, harping on about old out of date devices that comparatively few people have (N93) and ignoring the TRUE "ultimate video smartphone" that many more consumers will actually have in their pockets - the 6220 Classic. At the very least this is reviewer bias coming out and it's unprofessional.
It wouldn't kill you to do update this article and your other recent comparisons, with a 6220 Classic section. At the moment I can't take these articles seriously.
I seriously doubt your assertion that the 6220 Classic will sell more than the N95. I see N95s everywhere, and i'm not sure I have ever seen a 6220.
I think that you have a point, it is a phone in a different market segment and deserving of some comparison, but your rant is a bit too much.
Of course, sadly this review also confirms just how far down the list video quality is to Nokia and most other manufacturers. I suppose it's a case of 'good enough'.
The thing is, cameraphones almost by definition aren't used by those who want the highest quality images or video. People who buy devices primarily for photo or video would get a standalone camera or camcorder.
Most people buying cameraphones would be buying them primarily as phones, with the camera/camcorder quality at best next on the list.
If you make a phone built around camera/camcorder quality, which the N93 clearly was, it seems to fall between two stools: not phone-ish enough for cameraphone fans, not camera-ish enough for camera fans.
I noticed that the n82 had a small red light that would light up when it starts to record, i wonder whether the nokia n78 has the same feature or does it use its LED to light up.
By one of those odd coincidences, today's daily Doonesbury is a timely reminder of how much technology has moved on.
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20081114
(you don't need to know who the characters are, it's just the last two frames and the punchline that are relevant)
It's a shame that neither the Samsung M8800 with it's WVGA video recording was included in this or the LG KC910 which manages DIVx video recording. Both would have been better examples of feature phones than the ones that were actually used.
Don't forget that the N85 also allows you to use the dual LED for a video light, be interesting to do an "in the pub" dark video and see which comes out top.
Where would the N85 fit in here?
Unregistered wrote:The 6620 Classic is a far more significant device than any of the NSeries - why? Because it does not advertise itself as a smartphone, and is far cheaper than an NSeries, thus making it far more appealing to far more ordinary folk who would be put off by a smartphone tag and the price of a high end device. I am willing to bet the whole AAS team a pint each that the 6220 Classic will go on to sell far more eventually than the N95 does (if it has not already).
I recently got a 6220 Classic and have to admit it's a pretty nifty device for such a small package. Whether or not it will sell as well as an N95 I don't know. In the UK at least it does seem to be offered by quite a few operators as a "free" phone which is always a good sign.
Oddly, the things that seem to hold it back most are lack of support from Nokia: There's no N-Gage support (though the fact that they support the 6210 Navigator now is promising since I suspect that's quite similar under the hood), no Internet Radio app (I tried downloading a version for one of the other Nokia models and it installed but wouldn't start), no (official) Mac OS X iSync plug-in etc.
I'm pretty sure these things will come eventually, but the phone's been around for a few months now, so they do seem to be dagging their heals a little bit.
Sorry about being a little off-topic there. So, to get back on-topic: I haven't thoroughly tested the camera yet but it does seem to do the VGA@30fps video well enough. Probably not as crisp as an N95, but at least it's smooth! 😊
I agree about the omission of the dual led vs xenon - this is one of the few areas where LED will win out over the generally more desirable big brother.
Again, the Innov8 does seem to have more vivid colours (unrealistic even) - a bit like those early colour movies of the 50's. The stills images are the same and it is one of the reasons I eventually didn't go for this model. Yes a s/w fix would be good, but it's been a while already.
BTW, further to your comment about the n96 video being really bad, I don't seem to have the same problems as you Steve. I seem to remember showing you some video shot on the 96 at the recent pub meet (we even compared sample shots of the pub crowd with the 93 and there wasn't a huge difference) - it is certainly comparable with my n95. Yes, a few tweaks here and there may be required, but actually it's really not that bad. Maybe you have a duff unit.
ILG
As the owner of the N95 since its first introduction, I have managed to ditch away with my compact still camera and even my video camera so these comparisons have been very interesting to read.
One of the points I want to mention in the video recording is that despite all the specifications that manufacturers put on their phones, it fails to produce any real figures of video/audio capture BITRATES.
Yes, BITRATES is something that is extremely important in movies. If there are any of you here that has ever done any conversions from DVD to MP4, DIVX or XVID, you will know what I mean.
Bitrates should be mentioned and compared when looking at movies simply because two phones can have the same "specs" doing 640x480x30fps can produce different results - especially for fast moving scenes (where low bitrate like the current set of phones) will produce really blocky output.
Video compression works in the way that it will take alternating stills and then through its codec algorithms produce the in-between frames to get the desired effect of moving pictures. If the capture rate is too low and that the main reference frames are too far in between, it will mean the video be either very choppy or very blocky with little to no detail on the image quality.
For fair comparisons of video recording on mobile phones, the bitrate really needs to be taken into consideration .. hence why Nokia can never claim the current set of phones to be "DVD quality" (even though it is pretty much Interlaced NTSC rates) - but rather "DVD-Like-quality". DVDs have video bitrates of up to 10Mbit/sec..