Nokia 5800 Cell Phone Review - Imaging

We admit it. We have been spoiled by past Nokia's that have performed quite well in our imaging tests. Unfortunately, the 5800 doesn't live up to the reputation of its peers and predecessors, posting less-than-stellar still image and video resolution and noise results. Fortunately, the camera interface is nice and easy to use, though we think the photo album software could use some work.

Resolution (4.94)
Frankly, we're used to very good still image resolution results from Nokia devices, but the 5800 lets us down in a big way here. Here, the HTC Touch Diamond, another device with a 3.2-megapixel camera, posted better results, and the 5800 isn't even very far ahead of the iPhone 3G with its terrible 2.0-megapixel fixed focus lens.

A picture of the resolution chart taken with the 5800

To evaluate a camera's resolution, we set the phone's camera to its highest quality and resolution settings and then take pictures of an industry-standard resolution chart with it. We then run the resulting images through the Imatest image analysis software. This software analyzes the pictures to measure the point at which black and white lines lose definition and begin to blur into each other, expressed in line widths per picture height (lw/ph) on the horizontal and vertical. As with most things we measure, higher numbers mean better resolution. The 5800 was able to resolve 1054 lw/ph horizontally and 1062 lw/ph vertically. Comparatively, the HTC Touch Diamond managed 1213 / 1214 lw/ph with a similarly-spec'd camera. The Samsung Memoir blows every other device out of the water with its 8-megapixel camera that managed 3264 / 2448 lw/ph.

Cell Phone	Nokia 5800	Blackberry Storm	T-Mobile G1
Score	4.94	2.65	4.04
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1054 / 1062	1020 / 826	954 / 962
Image of Resolution Chart

Cell Phone	HTC Touch Diamond	Apple iPhone 3G	Samsung Memoir
Score	6.54	3.33	14.85
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1213 / 1214	866 / 897	3264 / 2448
Image of Resolution Chart

Color (5.26)
The 5800 doesn't do too bad here, posting performance better than most of our comparison phones, except the notable Samsung Memoir.

We use another industry-standard chart, the GretagMacbeth chart, to evaluate a camera's color accuracy. We take pictures of the chart with the phone's camera and run the resulting images through the Imatest software which then provides data on how closely the camera reproduced the chart's colors. The data comes in the form of 2 charts - the first is a view of the GretagMacbeth chart and gives a visual demonstration of what the camera captured. In this chart, the smallest rectangle shows the actual "correct" color, the largest rectangle shows what the camera captured, and the last interior rectangle shows what the camera should have captured with correction for lighting.

The 5800's color chart showing ideal colors and colors corrected for lighting

As you can see from the 5800's color chart, the smallest interior rectangle that shows the ideal color for the lighting conditions is darker than what was captured by the 5800 across most of the spectrum.

Imatest also generates a color error chart to display graphically how accurate the camera was in capturing color. In this chart, the squares indicate what the ideal color capture would be and the circles show how the camera captured that particular color. The line connecting each square and circle represents how accurately the camera captured the color - the longer the line, the less accurate the camera was. The chart also shows the level of saturation for each color captured by the camera - if the circles are closer to the center of the chart than the squares, the camera is capturing under-saturated color. If the squares are closer to the center of the chart than the circles, the camera is capturing over-saturated colors.

The 5800's color error chart

The 5800's color error chart bears out what is visible to the naked eye on the color chart above, showing circles that are closer to the center of the chart than the squares – meaning that the 5800 captures under-saturated color – in many areas across the spectrum.

Cell Phone	Nokia 5800	Blackberry Storm	T-Mobile G1
Score	5.26	3.30	2.56
Color Checker Chart

Cell Phone	HTC Touch Diamond	Apple iPhone 3G	Samsung Memoir
Score	4.08	3.90	6.83
Color Checker Chart

Noise (0.81)
Most cell phone cameras perform poorly in this area, and frankly, we expect them to since they often lack the settings and image processor capabilities to adjust appropriately in low-light conditions. The 5800 doesn't surprise us here with poor performance, even below that of our comparison phones, which is not great to begin with at all. The bottom line is that you shouldn't count on the 5800's, or just about any other cell phone's, camera to capture good images in low-light conditions.

To test noise, we use the phone's camera to take pictures of the GretagMacbeth color chart at various lighting levels ranging from the equivalent of bright daylight down to candle light. Noise is more prevalent in low-light situations since any capturing errors in the image sensor can produce signals greater or less than what is actually present in the image being captured, resulting in graininess and inaccurate color. The resulting images from the various lighting levels are run through the Imatest software, which evaluates noise consistency through the different lighting levels.

Live Preview (9.0)
The 5800 has a good live preview, though it's not as large as we'd like and doesn't take full advantage of the 5800's large screen. The  camera application always opens in landscape orientation no matter how you're holding the phone. The live preview takes up most of the screen, with a strip of black on the right side to show quick shortcuts to exit the camera application, capture a shot, change the flash settings, access capture settings and the main menu, and more. In the top left is a camera icon to let you know you're in still image mode, and this changes to a small video camera when you're in video mode. Along the left side is a zoom slider, though this disappears after a few moments. In the bottom left is information on battery status, which is nice to have, picture size, the number of shots that can be saved to remaining space inn the selected storage location, and the selected storage location, represented by an image of a phone or a memory card.

The 5800's still image live preview

There's a viewfinder guide that always overlays the live preview. This and the menu bar on the right never disappear from the live preview, which is unlike other Nokias we've seen where you're left with an almost unhindered view of what you're framing up after a few moments.

Fast movement in the live preview shows some blurriness, but it's not that bad and there are no other issues. Pictures captured show the same amount of area you framed when you took the shot, which is very good.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (7.80)
If you often take your phone out of your pocket to quickly take a picture, you'll be happy to know that this does not take much time at all on the 5800, with an average of 2.56 seconds to go from the home screen in the unlocked state to the moment an image is captured. Pressing the camera button takes you right to the camera application, which opens pretty quickly. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shot to Shot Time (8.58)
If you like to take multiple pictures in quick succession, the 5800 will make you a happy camper with its Sequence mode. Here, the 5800 takes picture after picture once you press the shutter button until you press it again, and we captured 15 images in 5.25 seconds, which equates to 2.86 frames per second. This gives the 5800 a very good score here, second only to the Samsung Memoir. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shutter to Shot Time (7.65)
Cell phone cameras usually aren't as quick on the draw as a dedicated digital camera, taking more time for the shutter to activate and capture an image. Fortunately, the 5800 is one of the quicker phones here, taking an average of .26 second to capture an image after the shutter button is pressed. Here, the 5800 comes in second again behind the Samsung Memoir, our reigning king of imaging performance. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Interface (8.5)
As previously noted, the 5800 is different from previous Nokia devices that we've seen, though this isn't necessarily a bad thing. You can use the camera button or an on-screen shutter button to capture an image. Zooming can be done with an on-screen zoom slider on the left side or using the volume up/down rocker. The constant presence of the shortcut items to get to the shooting mode, flash, and other settings on the right make it easy to make quick changes to best suit the conditions you're in, though we do still wish these would disappear after a little while and let the live preview take up the entire screen. The only on-screen cue that does disappear after a few moments is the zoom slider on the left.

The still image live preview

The camera button takes a bit more pressure than we'd like to activate, so the on-screen shutter activation button is a better alternative if your hands are slippery or if your hands are shaky. The battery level indicator in the bottom left corner is a nice touch, and one that we don't often see.

The camera's main menu

The camera's main settings menu allows you to choose the image resolution, turn on geo-tagging, turn post-capture review on and off, choose the selected storage location, and more. We'll cover the shooting settings in the following sections.

The camera's main settings panel

All in all, we like the 5800's interface a lot and have only a few wishes to make it better.

Photo Album Software Internal (5.5)
Captured images can be accessed through a shortcut in the camera application or through the Gallery link in the main menu. Images are shown in a thumbnail view by default, showing the most recently-captured images at the bottom. The Options menu allows you to choose to view them by date, title, or size. Through this menu you can also start a slide show, create folders to organize your pictures, choose to assign a picture to a contact, set it as the wallpaper image, and much more.

The main view of the Gallery application

3 shortcut icons at the bottom of the main thumbnail view allow you to send a selected photo by message, email, Bluetooth, or upload it to an online service, including Nokia's new Ovi service, Flickr, or Vox, show the Edit menu, or delete a picture. These 3 shortcut icons present an interface quirk, or feature, that might take some users a little time to get used to – when you click on a thumbnail, your first expectation is that it will open to show you a full-screen view, but this is not the case. Tapping on a thumbnail will only activate the 3 shortcut buttons at the bottom so you can tap on one of these to take advantage of the features offered. So, essentially, you must double tap on a thumbnail to view the image. This navigation method is present throughout the 5800's interface and is completely different than every other touchscreen device we've reviewed to date where a simple tap will open or activate whatever you're touching. We'll touch on this some more throughout the review and in the Software section.

The thumbnail view and a single photo viewed in the Gallery

In the end, the 5800's photo album software is easy to navigate once you get used to the double-tap required to open an image, though we still prefer the relative simplicity of the single-touch-only-required photo albums of the T-Mobile G1 and iPhone 3G over the 5800's less intuitive one.

Manual Control (2.0)
We don't expect cameras in cell phones to have many manual control options, if any at all, but the 5800 has a few that earn it points under our scoring guide. For starters, it has a number of scene modes in addition to the standard Automatic one – 7 more to be exact: User Defined, Close-up, Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Night, and Night Portrait. The User Defined mode allows you to create and edit your own mode. When you go to customize this one, you can choose to base it on another preset scene mode, define the flash setting, white balance, exposure compensation, color tone, light sensitivity, sharpness, and contrast.

Exploring the Light Sensitivity setting shows ISO options of Automatic, Low, Medium, and High. This isn't as comprehensive or as specific as the multiple ISO settings between 100 and 1600 available on the Samsung Memoir, but it's better than not having these options.

While you can't adjust control aperture or shutter priority, the 5800 gives you more preset control than we even seen on cell phones with very good camera functionality.

Zoom (1.0)
The 5800 offers up to 4x digital zoom. Digital zoom does nothing at all to truly get "closer" to the subject as it only crops and enlarges the framed image, and we award only a single point for it no matter what zoom level is available.

Focus (5.0)
The 5800 has an auto-focus lens. This cannot be deactivated or controlled manually, nor can the focus stops be adjusted.

Flash (6.0)
The 5800 has a dual-LED flash that can be set to go on automatically when conditions warrant it, reduce red eye, or stay on or off constantly. In low light, the flash will act as an auto-focus assist lamp, lighting briefly as the lens focuses, and then turning off until the shutter button is fully pressed, at which point is flashes just as you'd expect. It has a range of a few feet, which is not great but it's far better than no flash at all.

The camera's flash settings menu

In video capture mode, the flash can stay on constantly to illuminate a scene in low-light conditions.

Metering (2.0)
We don't see metering controls, which let you adjust how light is judged by the camera, very often in cell phone cameras, though the 5800 is an exception here. You can adjust exposure on a fixed +/- 2 scale in .5 increments, earning it 2 points in this area.

White Balance (2.0)
To ensure that whites are accurately portrayed under different lighting conditions, the 5800 offers common white balance presets: Automatic, Sunny, Cloudy, Incandescent, and Fluorescent, earning it 2 points in this area, matching the Blackberry Storm, HTC Touch Diamond, and Samsung Memoir.

Image Handling (8.0)
The image editing options on the 5800 are pretty extensive for a cell phone. In addition to the basic, moving, renaming, re-sizing, cropping and rotating that we often see, you can adjust a photo's brightness, contrast, and sharpness and correct red-eye, as well as apply color effects to make it black & white, sepia toned, or negative. You can also add talk bubbles, clip art, a frame, and text, or posterize an image. All of this earns the 5800 a healthy number of points here, second only to the Samsung Memoir among our comparison phones.

The extensive editing menu

We have to note one interface quirk in photo editing here. There are a number of icons available in the editing menu and the only way to see what they are is to tap on them, though once you tap on them, they are applied right away. If you change your mind or pressed one by mistake, choosing to not save changes to the image brings you back to the view you had before the Edit menu was visible, so you have to choose Edit again to see the available options, and this menu takes a few moments to appear.

Video Quality (7.0)
To evaluate video quality, we record a video using the phone's camera and transfer it to a computer to view it on a large screen and compare it to videos of the same scene taken with other cell phones. The video from the 5800 was pretty good relative to others we've seen in the past – though it showed significant pixelation, as you'd expect, in full screen mode on our computer screen, it was still quite recognizable and handled color and fast motion very well.

Video Resolution (5.04)
3 out of our 5 comparison phones can record video, and all of them scored better than the 5800 in terms of video resolution, disappointing us yet again. We perform this test much in the same way we perform the still image resolution tests, but using images extracted from recorded video, of course. The 5800 managed to resolve 272 lw/ph horizontally and 222 lw/ph vertically. We'd never expect video from a cell phone to compete with anything that could come from even a low-end camcorder, but this will be sufficient for MMS videos.

Video Compression (4.0)
The 5800 records video in MPEG4 or 3GPP format, changing automatically based on the video resolution quality setting you choose. There are 5 video resolution settings available, with the highest 4 automatically set to MPEG4 and the lowest, intended for sending via MMS, in 3GP format.

Interface (8.5)
As is typical, the video capture interface is shared with the still image one, requiring only a quick toggle in the menu to switch between the 2 modes. Here again, the live preview takes up most of the screen with settings shortcuts in a black bar along the right side and the same useful information along the bottom left corner as in the still image live preview.

The video capture live preview

The video shooting options are less plentiful than those available for still image capture, which is quite common. You can choose your scene mode, change your white balance preset, and change the color tone in this menu, or go quickly back to still image capture mode or to the media gallery.

Manual Control (0.0)
It is very rare indeed that we find manual controls for video capture on a cell phone, and the 5800 fails to buck the trend here with none to speak of.

Zoom (1.0)
Digital zoom is still available in video mode, earning the 5800 a point here, keeping it on par with the other comparison devices that are capable of recording video.

Editing (6.0)
Previous models in Nokia's N-series line-up had video editing capabilities, but we were disappointed that the N96 did not inherit these. The 5800 offers some here, which is more than what's available in any of our comparison phones.

The video editing menu

Videos captured by the 5800 can be trimmed or cut or merged with another video or still image. You can also change the video's sound by selecting an existing song or sound clip to replace the existing audio track. You can also add text to a video

Modes (6.0)
The 5800 does well for itself here with more mode features than even the Samsung Memoir. As mentioned in the Video Compression section above, the 5800 has a separate setting to record video specifically for sending via MMS. When capturing video, there are 3 scene modes from which to choose – Automatic, low light mode, and night. The available white balance presets are Automatic, Sunny, Cloudy, Incandescent, and Fluorescent, and the available color tones are Sepia, Black & White, Vivid, and Negative.

The video capture main settings menu

In addition to the MMS recording resolution setting, there's a higher resolution setting for sending videos as email attachments, earning the 5800 points here as well.

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