The big 5 megapixel test

Samsung G810

G810, as opposed to the previous phones, is a photographic phone, which is proven by the 3X optical zoom and the Xenon flash. The phone itself is built on Symbian, the camera’s software is the most advanced of all the phones tested, the only feature it lacks is smile recognition. There are thirteen preset modes; sensitivity can be set between ISO 50 and ISO 800, which are very impressive data on paper. At the flash we can set a red-eye reduction mode (pre-flashing) – although this is supported by a number of different models, but those always use this mode, which probably has a negative effect on the battery, since they flash twice even when this is completely unneeded.

Samsung i900 Omnia

Our last Samsung phone is i900, based on the Windows Mobile operating system. Our regular readers probably know that the device we have is a prototype used for long-term testing, and it is here in this article, since Samsung claimed that the camera’s software is already final. Still, we didn’t have this impression.

Even in spite of we’re talking about Windows, the software is still quite advanced. There are thirteen preset modes and fourteen effects to choose from, there is face- and smile-recognition, high dynamics range, but exposure sound cannot be turned off, although we think that this should be a default feature. Another weak spot is that we can take images in a sequence only at QVGA resolution, while the sensitivity range is quite short (ISO 50 - ISO 200).

Nokia N82

Probably the Finnish fans will go wild in happiness when seeing their favorite. Many are talking about the multimedia monster as if it was the best camera phone, well… son it’ll turn out if they are right. We know since N95 that the Nokia and Carl Zeiss labels are no warranty for anything. The Xenon flash, however, is not just a trick, and N82 has one of these. It is however not advertised anywhere by our Finnish friends that their phone has the smallest angular field of all 5 megapixel devices, we think it is above 40 mm, so the user will have to take quite a lot of steps backwards if he’d like to have the whole family on the picture. We have been testing two of this phone, a black one that is Made by Nokia and a silver that had Made in Finland written on it. There has been a huge difference in quality between the two phones, pictures taken with the black one have blurred edges, while there have been no such problems with the silver one. This makes it evident that there is a great difference in quality – we would quickly like to note that neither the ones with Made by Nokia on them are forgeries, they just have a weaker camera in the, but this is not, I repeat NOT a warranty issue, so this is no reason to change the handset. In the test we have of course used the better images, but we shouldn’t forget at the summary: there are a lot of low-quality N82s on the market.

The Series 60-based device uses the camera software that has been in use by Nokia for a long time, and this has its pros and cons too. The latter category includes such things like the fact we can’t set light metering, and at sensitivity we can only select from low/medium/high, but we don’t see the ISO value. Positive aspects are that we can tamper with edge sharpness, and we can set timed shooting – which means that the phone takes a picture every X minutes. There are only four preset modes available (portrait, landscape, night portrait, night landscape).

Contestants #3: Nokia N95, N95 8 GB, Sony Ericsson C902, K850i