Nokia’s N95 once was the best camera phone on the market: its 5MP sensor (ganged up with a Carl Zeiss lens) delivered images unseen before on a mobile phone. Since then, Nokia didn’t increase the sensor resolution (probably for noise reasons) – does the N96 improve over its predecessor?
Specs-wise, the camera is unexciting. The lens delivers a decent basic aperture of f2.8; the flash is handled by a rather unimpressive set of flash LED’s. By the way: don’t bother to try and use the stand for macro photography…the phone can’t focus on objects that close…
Our first real-world test involved an out-door landscape (click images for bigger versions, N96 always on the left). One can immediately see that the current firmware of the N96 has huge issues with bright images – the flooding in the image is simply insane:
The N95 8GB manages to preserve a lot more detail:
Next up: architecture. The N96 once again tends to overexpose images significantly (and seems to have a poor dynamic range):
As usual, details are lost on the N96:
Finally, here’s an indoor comparison between the two devices:
In general, one can say that the N96’s images are more aggressively post-processed than the ones created by its predecessor. The N95 8GB delivers sharper images with more detail, but has more noise – images from the N96 are much softer, but noise-free. This accurately reflects the N96’s targeting – it is intended to be used by “unexperienced” users who aren’t interested in getting out the last nit of detail…
P.S. Here are the four images as produced by a Nokia N71 with a 2MP fix-focus camera:
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