The big 5 megapixel test

Foreword

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, my good Friends, fellow citizens, Georges and non-Georges! After such a start one would expect a big announcement, and we hope none of you will be disappointed, as after a long organizing period we have brought together twelve handsets that have a 5 megapixel camera, the crème de la crème of the phones available today.

Our review includes almost all 5 megapixel devices currently available on the market. Although Samsung has more models thanks to its wider portfolio of products, we still didn’t take a look at all of their phones: G800 is missing with its 3X optical zoom, but in turn here’s its predecessor, G810. Although we have originally included only eight devices, upon requests from our readers we have added four other models, and we have used a different Nokia N82, that had poor results in the first test. No matter how hard we tried, the circumstances still weren’t exactly the same; we’ll note this at the appropriate test pictures. We hope we can finally end the debate of which camera phones are the best. There are twelve handsets that were analyzed, zoomed, discussed and finally we have summed them up, as usual.

So our contestants are all set, and the pictures can give you a hint about who are they, but let’s just quickly run through the list of the world-class team: Nokia N82, Nokia N95 and N95 8 GB, Sony Ericsson C902, Sony Ericsson K850i, LG KF750 (Secret), LG KU990 (Viewty), Samsung G600, Samsung G810, Samsung F480, Samsung U900 and last but not least Samsung i900 that can be considered as final from the point of view of the camera.

We have of course had our secret favorites. But we must make it clear at the beginning that these phones are comparable with each other at most, as a medium-quality camera has great chances to simply crush them. We have already covered this topic, you should take a look at our review, mostly because there are some basic photography concepts that you should know in order to completely understand our current review.

Contestants #1: Samsung G600, U900, F480

Before reviewing the pictures let’s just quickly take a look at what features and software do these phones have to offer, as this is almost as important as the image sensor and the quality of the lens. Although some might expect a lot from all eight phones, based on the 5 megapixel label, but there are some rather great differences in a couple of available features. Still, most models have such comfort features that have become widespread in the last couple of years in digital cameras – face recognizing focusing or exposure on smiles are such things (a.k.a. face- and smile recognition). All devices lack manual settings, but we can find such settings in all phones that are not present on very low-end cameras – based on these we could think that 5 megapixel phones are nowadays better than cheap cameras, but this is far from being true in terms of image quality.

Unfortunately we can’t offer exact information about technical stuff, as the type and size of the image sensors are kept as extremely secret information by the manufacturers. We still managed to find out some things about a couple of the handsets, but since these are confidential information, we can only write about them in general. The phones usually have an image sensor of a size between 1/3.2 – 1/4 inches, CMOS is the more wide-spread technology, while the manufacturer of the sensor varies. We unfortunately couldn’t calculate the angular field of the lens to a value equivalent with the miniature camera system in lack of exact data, but we can say for sure based on the pictures, that there are great differences between the phones in this matter too – generally we could say that the value is between 35-400 mm, and we’ll mention this at the different handsets.

Hirdetés

Samsung G600

Our first device is a strong candidate of the race, it is the first phone of Samsung to have a 5 megapixel camera and to get to Europe, and at the same time it is cheapest of the tested devices. Its SIM-free edition currently costs about €210 EUR. Many people say that this is the winner in terms of picture quality. We’ll see.

The software is similar to the one on other BlackUI-based devices. It doesn’t have modes, no face recognition and we can’t even increase the dynamics range from the software. Still, sensitivity can be set between ISO 100 and ISO 800, and we can choose all three light metering modes: matrix, center-weighted and spot.

Samsung U900 Soul

Our second subject is Samsung’s current top fashion phone, U900 Soul that has been announced in Barcelona. In this phone, given its category, not the camera is the most important aspect, the 5 megapixels are probably here only because it sounds good and a flagship needs it. Still, since the test we know that in spite of this it performs well.

The handset is also based on the Korean manufacturer’s BlackUI menu system, so the camera’s software is similar to G600’s. It is an essential difference that in the Soul there are eight preset modes: portrait, landscape, sport, sunset, sunrise (haha), night, counter light, text. The image sensor is probably different from the one in the previously mentioned phone, as sensitivity can be set between ISO 50 and ISO 400. There is face recognition and increased dynamics range and there is even a software image stabilizer.

Samsung F480

Our third Samsung model is Widget Jones, or to be more precise it’s F480 with a touchscreen. The camera is again not that emphasized, which is proven for example by the fact that there is no center weighted light metering, but the fashionable tricks – exposure on smiles, high dynamics range – are present. It’s interesting that we can’t enable a separate macro mode, but the phone is still capable of taking such pictures. It knows six different modes (portrait, sport photo, sunrise, sunset, winter landscape, night image) and sensitivity can be set between ISO 100 and ISO 400. Here I would like to mention that it’s a great fun to set sunrise and then sunset mode, as there are perfectly the same from all aspects (identical color temperature, etc.).

Contestants #2: Samsung G810, i900, Nokia N82

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

Nokia N95 and N95 8 GB

The basic N95 on top, the 8 GB edition , without lens protection, on the bottom

We probably don’t have to describe the Finnish multimedia monsters to anyone, these were the first phones to have a 5 megapixel image sensor form the renowned manufacturer. The only difference from the camera’s point of view between the original and the 8 GB edition is that the latter has no lens protection. The software is the same on N82, so it has all its pros and cons.

Sony Ericsson C902

Although Sony Ericsson is one of the greatest pioneers of mobile photography, they are not performing very well nowadays. This is mostly incomprehensible because Sony has all the devices and technology, they could theoretically make without any effort a camera phone that satisfies all needs. But they are not making.

Cyber-shot or not, C902’s software has some great flaws here and there. For example there is no spot light metering and sensitivity cannot be set. There are six preset modes and we have picture stabilizer and face recognition focus as a bonus.

Sony Ericsson K850i

The first 5 megapixel model from Sony Ericsson, that had some software issues for a long time after its launch. I have been very delicate with this sentence, the truth is that the first software that really patches most bugs has appeared only a couple of weeks ago (version number R1FA035). It is more advanced than C902 both in terms of software and hardware, it has a Xenon flash, which has red-eye reduction mode, we can set sensitivity and there is a mode in plus (dusk portrait).

Contestants #4: LG KF750 Secret, KU990 Viewty, technical comparison

LG KF750 Secret

Our next-to-the-last contestant is LG KF750 Secret. The uncrowned king of video recording is quite good at pictures too. Sensitivity can be set between ISO 100 and ISO 800, image sequencing is incredibly fast, there is a software picture stabilizer, but shutter sound cannot be turned off.

LG KU990 Viewty

Last, but not least, let’s take a look at LG’s previous 5 megapixel model, Viewty. It basically has the same features as Secret, but it lacks frames, it has fewer effects, but it has red-eye reduction flashing. An interesting feature is the wheel around the camera that can be used for zooming – unfortunately it’s only digital.

And now let’s see a summary table of the phone’s capabilities, which is so wide (due to the lots of information), that we had to put a scrollbar on the bottom. If someone has a large monitor then just click here to make the table open up in a separate window.

Image noise, optical characteristics

First of all let’s take a look at image noise, as one of the most important aspects that influence image quality. For obvious reasons we didn’t take a picture with all the phones at all ISO settings, as that would have resulted in at least 40 pictures – instead of this we have taken a look at pictures taken in bright sunlight in auto mode. The best is LG KF750, it makes beautiful images, but Samsung G600 and U900 are also amongst the leaders. Traces of noise reduction are the most powerful in the case of Nokia N82 and Sony Ericsson C902, while i900 and F480 take pictures that are quite poor in details and blurred. Pictures of G810 have a medium noise level, filtering, however, is weak, so the resulting images are quite rich in details.

Noiseless, noisy, noise reduced images

We can learn a lot about the lens used in the phones upon analyzing the sides of the images. That’s why we have taken a more detailed look at the corners of the images, and the results might be surprising for many of you: the most disappointing results were from Nokia N82, the one with the Made by Nokia. No matter the Carl-Zeiss lens, the left sides of the images are very blurred, which means that the lens are smaller than appropriate for the image sensor – fortunately there were no such problems with the Made in Finland edition. This has been visible at the N95s too, although it was less powerful – the reason for this is that the lens size is not appropriate for the image sensor. It’s especially funny at the weaker N82 that the left side of the images is much more blurred than the right side, which means that the center of the lens is not above the sensor’s center, thus it is poorly assembled. Rim obscuration is the most powerful at G810, and that’s no wonder since the lenses that have optical zoom – by the way this effect is present only at wide-angle view.

Blurred corners (on the left) and sharp center (on the right) on Nokia N82’s images

Besides the symptoms we have just described another thing that tells a lot about lens quality is chromatic aberration that is the degree of difference in colors. Convex lens work like prisms, they decompose light to different colors to some extent. When using cheap, low-quality lens it might happen that rays of light “coming” from a spot of the pictured theme might get distorted by colors on picture side (on the sensor). The flaw is visible at the contours (where light and dark parts meet) and usually only at the edges of the picture – for example in case of night pictures, or when there is a dark part, that is lit from the back, in front of a light sky. From these eight phones tested only Sony Ericsson C902 managed to produce this error, but at that one it is quite powerful.

Powerful chromatic aberration on Sony Ericsson C902’s images

It’s worth talking about the so-called hotpixels. These are such spots on the image sensor that, due to a manufacturing flaw, are much more sensitive than others, which means they get saturated much faster. The effect is present in case of night pictures, at higher shutter speeds (above 1/10 seconds). This has been characteristic for two handsets, C902 and N82, but it wasn’t very strong at any of them.

Hotpixels on Sony Ericsson C902’s night image

Daylight and macro images

We’ll start evaluation with daylight images. Although the weather hasn’t been our good friend in the past weeks, but we still managed to catch an afternoon with bright sunlight: we just couldn’t wish for better circumstances. We have intentionally used the automatic settings and set light metering to center weighted – where we could. We have also set sensitivity to automatic, as in such a nice weather we were sure that the phones will choose the lowest ISO value – and if they don’t then they deserve to get marked down because of the noisy pictures.

Samsung G600 / Samsung G810 / Samsung i900 / Samsung U900

Nokia N82 (Made by Nokia: click)/ Sony Ericsson C902 / Sony Ericsson K850i / Samsung F480

Nokia N95 / Nokia N95 8 GB / LG KF750 Secret / LG KU990 Viewty

The best picture was obviously taken by LG KF750, it has low noise, lots of details and nice colors. The images taken by Samsung G600 and U900 are also okay, i900 also performed well; it just over-exposed the image a bit. The performance of C902, KU990, the two N95s and G810 are all medium, all of them have lots of mage noise. The edges of the picture in case of the Made by Nokia N82 are very blurred, the Finnish edition performed quite well. K850i took pale images with soft outlines and a bit too much noise filtering, but the worse was still F480, with its blurred, soft images that lack details. .

Samsung G600 / Samsung G810 / Samsung i900 / Samsung U900

Nokia N82 (Made by Nokia: click) / Sony Ericsson C902 / Sony Ericsson K850i / Samsung F480

Nokia N95 / Nokia N95 8 GB / LG KF750 Secret / LG KU990 Viewty

When taking macro images the LG’s battery has unfortunately run dry, there was no charger nearby, so unfortunately Secret missed this part – as a compensation take a look at a macro image from the phone’s review. We can’t declare a winner unanimously in case of the close-up images, as practically all phones have taken a good quality picture. The worse was i900, the image isn’t very sharp, the contours are very soft, while in the case of C902 we can see the chromatic aberration, which is fortunately not present at K850i. When testing the second series of phones the sun was shining from a bit different angle, that’s why the... ahem… shoe looks differently. That’s the very reason for which the images of the N95s look worse at first glance, but upon zooming in on them it becomes obvious that they are completely okay.

Night images

We have taken two pictures in the dark, the firs was without night mode being turned on. We were consistent and have taken three pictures with all phones and then chosen the best. G600, G810, i900, KF750, KU990 and K850i still made useless pictures, Sony Ericcson’s model took only blurred images, while LG Secret couldn’t focus automatically, and I got bored of it after a couple of minutes of waiting. N82 is the leader, but I must note that all three images taken by it had a different tone, so the white balance automatism wasn’t doing its best. The two N95s have performed weaker than N82, U900 and F480 have both taken surprisingly good images.

Samsung G600 / Samsung G810 / Samsung i900 / Samsung U900

Nokia N82 (Made by Nokia: click)/ Sony Ericsson C902 / Sony Ericsson K850i / Samsung F480

Nokia N95 / Nokia N95 8 GB / LG KF750 Secret / LG KU990 Viewty

After this we have turned on night mode and turned 90 degrees to take a picture of something else. Unfortunately when expanding the review (at our second visit) at the Hero’s Square, where we were to take the pictures, the clean-up of Carlos Santana’s concert was in progress, although we have purposefully went there a day after the event. This had influence on three things: the area before the museum was nicely lit; there was a huge tent in the way which forced me to take the pictures from a couple of steps backwards. The contestants of the second round (N95s, K850i, KU990) have all taken quite good pictures, but as it has turned out, not the reflectors were the cause, as I have taken some images at a darker place too and those also were good. Unfortunately i900 fell out in night mode, as it set sensitivity to ISO 50 and light metering to spot, which resulted in an image underexposed with a couple of exposure values – although there would be no problems with sensitivity. The change did no good to U900 and F480, both took overexposed, blurred images. G810 had better results, although there is a considerable amount of image noise. N82 still leads the pack, Secret is still nothing, while C902 is still no big deal. G600 took a slightly better picture, but the reason for this can be read under the test photos.

Samsung G600 / Samsung G810 / Samsung i900 / Samsung U900

Nokia N82 (Made in Finland: click)/ Sony Ericsson C902 / Sony Ericsson K850i / Samsung F480

Nokia N95 / Nokia N95 8 GB / LG KF750 Secret / LG KU990 Viewty

The table below contains the shutter speed, based on EXIF information. U900 and G810 won’t stress the users with such information, so we can’t say anything about them, but in the case of the others it turned out what does the night mode do. In the case of G600 shutter speed increased significantly, as in AUTO mode, the camera used 1 second shutter speed in the dark, which is mostly impossible to keep in hand without shaking. All the others, with the exception of i900 and KU990, have decreased shutter speed, I think that too much, as 1/4 second is still too long to keep the camera steady, even more in case of a small and light phone.

Pictures taken with flash

Finally we have tried the flash in complete darkness. None of the phones had problems with focusing, when there was no AF light, the flash started to function. On the test pictures you can see that the phones that have Xenon flash (G810, N82 and K850i) are the best, and from the others only i900 and KU990 produced a usable photo. The weakest is U900’s built-in flash, but the N95s were also competing for the last place. C902’s image is the strangest, it is characterized by bad white balance and very high image noise.

Samsung G600 / Samsung G810 / Samsung i900 / Samsung U900

Nokia N82 (Made by Nokia: click)/ Sony Ericsson C902 / Sony Ericsson K850i / Samsung F480

Nokia N95 / Nokia N95 8 GB / LG KF750 Secret / LG KU990 Viewty

Probably not many of you know what a Xenon flash is and why is it good for us, so here’s the time to clear things up. Well, these types of flashes have the most basic difference from the others that they work with gas. It was a joke, but it’s almost true: there is a pipe, filled with Xenon gas, and on the two edges there are electrodes, between which electrons start moving in case of an impulse. These react with the atoms of the gas, and thus the flash is produced. The only problem is that this needs high voltage, many hundreds or thousands of Volts, or otherwise the electron won’t move fast enough to react with Xenon. As we know cell phones are not famous for their batteries of thousands of Volts, and that’s why transformers come to aid, and this can increase voltage in such a manner that is enough to create the reaction. The whole thing is better then LED flashes because it has a more powerful light, but since such a voltage cannot be kept for a long time, these flashes can’t be continuously lit. Users’ opinions are different in the matter if this is good or bad, as there are many who use the conventional LED flashes as a flashlight. The perfect solution would be to include both light sources on the phone, and the LED flash could even be used as an AF light, although for such a purpose focused light is required.

Summary

The thing is that although we can’t declare any of the phones as a unanimous winner, all of them are good in a different circumstance. Let’s take them one by one.

Contestants of round two

Samsung G600 took very nice pictures in daylight, but in darkness it performed poorly. We should forget, however, that it costs half of any other phone from the pack! G810 is a more balanced handset, it is characterized by low noise filtering, medium levels of picture noise, and it takes usable pictures independently of lighting conditions, and furthermore it is the only one of the contestants to have optical zoom. Images taken with i900 give us some confidence, and we hope that the issue with the night mode will be corrected by the manufacturer – and since in this case we have some say in this, we hope that this will happen. U900, in spite of being a fashion phone, took quite good pictures – although only during the day.

Nokia N82 is the most interesting model. The silver colored edition takes really high quality pictures, it’s undoubtedly the best at night, but the images’ edges of the black edition are so much blurred, that it’s really a shame. The sad thing is that the lower quality models are also authentic Nokia products, not forgeries, and the camera, that takes pictures with a blurred edge, is not a warranty issue, so we should pay attention when buying one – that is we shouldn’t buy a black one, or at least we should be careful if there’s a chance. The only practical difference between the two N95 models is that the 8 GB edition creates files of a larger size, but it has a larger memory, so it can do it. Sony Ericsson C902 is very weak, it practically couldn’t make anything good, may there be day or night – and what’s even more troublesome, probably not even its predecessor, C905, will be better if only the number of megapixels are increased by the manufacturer. K850i with the upgraded software performs much better, I have been quite content with it; we just shouldn’t take images by night in AUTO mode. LG KF750 has been the surprise of the test, it took beautiful images by the day, that can even compete with a digital camera’s images, while at night it was seriously outscored. Still, when taking a look at KU990’s similar pictures we can say that this probably is a software issue, as the older model took better images in poorer lighting conditions, although it is basically weaker than Secret, its images are much more pale. And finally here’s Samsung F480, which didn’t perform very well in ideal conditions but it was really good by night. Based on these I can only repeat the sentence we have written so many times: those who want to take usable pictures should buy a digital camera. According to current trends, cell phones won’t reach a level for quite a time where they can take normal, usable images, no matter the number of megapixels.

Bocha feat. Bog

Translated by Szaszati

Samsung G810, F480, i900 and U900 used for testing were supplied by Samsung Hungary.

Sony Ericsson C902 and K850i were supplied by Sony Ericsson.

LG KU990 was offered for testing by LG Hungary.

LG KF750, Samsung G600, the two Nokia N95s and the N82 were provided by XXL GSM. The handsets can be purchased at:
Budapest VI. Jókai tér 6.
Budapest VI. Teréz körút 18.
On-line at www.xxlgsm.hu.