Nokia N95 Camera Phone Review

Permalink: Nokia N95 Camera Phone Review by Franz Bicar

The Nokia N95, the flagship smartphone from Nokia and one of their most successful handset to date has been around for quite some time. It even spawned two newer version to accommodate user preference, its big brother, the N95 8GB and the N95-3, which adds 3G support for North America.

The N95 runs on Nokia’s proprietary operating software (well at least majority of it is owned by Nokia) Symbian OS v9.2. It is the first mobile phone on the European market to offer a 5-megapixel resolution built-in camera. Of course now we have Sony Ericsson and Samsung offering that, but the N95 was the one to raise the bar up a notch. We say that cause the N95 didn’t just offer a 5-megapixel camera, it also packed in a Carl Zeiss lens, automatic focus, and detailed user-configurable settings. Of course, we are not saying that the N95 is the best camera phone there is - far from it. With the camera phone competition going on between mobile companies, its still a long way to declare an absolute winner.

To start, the N95’s camera is located at the rear, as mostly all camera phones do. A welcome addition to this is the tiny covering that protects its lens that you can easily open with an easy slide.

Both activation and deactivation of the camera application is accompanied by gradual lighting up of the side functional keys backlighting, just like in Nokia N73. On the right side, under your right pointing finger you will find a large release button; right next to it is an instant-access key to the Gallery; there is also a dual zoom key located under your left finger. To sum up, taking pictures with the phone is as natural as with your common digital camera.

At the front, you will see another camera designed for video calls. However, it can only do images of up to 640 × 480 pixels and is not that powerful as the camera at the back.

The camera is also equipped with a flash. It’s not a xenon flash as what the Sony Ericsson K850i or the Samsung G800 or even the Nokia N82 has, but maybe Nokia will release another version of this baby and offer that functionality as well.

As this is a camera phone, Nokia gives users the ability to change its settings for optimum image quality. This includes a shooting mode that would help the camera focus and provide exposure setup. There is the flash and the self-timer setting where you can turn it off or specify a time delay. Then there is the sequence mode, exposure compensation, white balance, color nuance, light sensitivity, contrast, sharpness and zoom. That is quite a lot for a camera phone.

As we mentioned earlier, the N95 is not the best camera phone out there. That title is still to be decided as newer models are coming in every now and then. However, we can never deny the picture quality of the N95. The images it creates maintain their sharpness throughout the entire frame. Higher resolution allow for printing on bigger formats as well as for creating crops.

Apparently the most significant disadvantage of Nokia N95’s pictures is their cold touch, which frequently results in a light violet shade. This drawback is best visible in pictures taken shortly before sunset.

Nokia N95 does not feature any special white balance option to make colors look more natural. Whatsoever, its images do not look bad at all; besides, any inaccuracies could be easily eliminated with some editing program on a PC.

Aside from it being a camera phone, the N95 can be a substitute video camera as well. You can record videos of average quality in 3GP format, suitable to go into MMS as well as high-quality videos in resolution of 640 × 480 pixels; the latter speed up to 30 shots in a second. High-quality videos are recorded in MP4 format, but they use an enormous amount of MB - half a minute of such a video eats up approximately 10 MB. Videos maximum length only depends on the available free memory.

Video function menu is somewhat poorer than the camera one. Here you will find shooting mode settings, white balance, and a number of color nuances. You can zoom in digitally while recording, but zooming is not fluent, and most of all, it worsens the overall image quality. The microphone can be silenced if you wish. Another unusual function in the menu is the so called image stabilizer, but its influence is almost invisible.

Videos look brilliant both on the phone display and on a TV screen. On a PC screen, however, they come out much too colorful, with a far too high contrast. Nevertheless, for the moment this is the best you can get from a photo mobile on the market.

With the Nokia N95, you get a 5-megapixel camera, auto focus, and very good optics. Although it lacks manual exposure settings and a high-quality xenon flash, its supporting cast is more than enough for techies out there. Apart from pure shooting options Nokia N95 also offers extras like filing pictures into albums, sending pictures in MMS or emails, or even sending images to a photographic blog within Flickr or Vox services. Pictures can be modified in the phone before they are uploaded.

Sources:
http://www.mobileburn.com
http://www.my-symbian.com
http://asia.cnet.com