Nokia E90 cell phone review - Imaging
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Mark Brezinski Published on September 17, 2007 Comment on this |
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Resolution (5.27)
To test the resolution of a phone's camera, we take a series of pictures of an industry standard resolution chart. We then input the resulting images into our Imatest software, which calculates the point at which the chart's alternating black and white lines can't be separated and vanish into gray. The measure it produces is called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph), which is determined horizontally and vertically. For viewing a picture on a cell phone, you really don't need high resolution. If you're planning on sending these pictures to your PC or printing them out, however, you'll need a higher resolution.
The E90's camera resolution managed to discern 1089 lw/ph horizontally and 992.9 lw/ph vertically; a decent score that should produce pictures with a decent amount of detail. It's nowhere near as high as the Nokia N95, but that's not suprising; the N95 comes with a larger, higher resolution camera.
| Cell Phone | Nokia E90 | HTC Mogul | BlackBerry 8800 |
| Score | 5.27 | 3.57 | 0.00 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 1089/992.9 | 895.9/831.6 | N/A: Doesn't have a camera. |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
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N/A: Doesn't have a camera. |
| Cell Phone | Nokia N95 | Helio Ocean | Apple iPhone |
| Score | 8.32 | 2.18 | 4.18 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 1368/1223 | 701/476.6 | 970/879 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
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Color (5.77)
To test how well a cell phone's camera can capture color, we take photos of an industry standard GretagMacbeth chart, which displays 24 different colors. We then run the photos through our Imatest imaging software. Imatest compares the captured colors to the originals.
The image above depicts the difference between what the colors should look like and what they do look like. This image contains three pieces of information: the captured color, the adjusted ideal color, and the ideal color. The background is how the E90 captured the chart. The inner square represents the adjusted ideal color, which is just the ideal color corrected for luminance. The innermost rectangle represents the true color. Overall, the E90 didn't do too badly. The colors are a bit undersaturated as a whole, but the biggest problem is some purples look like blues.
This second image better displays the degree to which the E90's color representation is off. The circle represents the E90's interpretation of the color, while the square represents where the original color is on the chart. The longer the line, the less accurate the colors. Overall, the E90 did a reasonable job; lines are a bit shorter than those we usually see. They were, however, a bit more lateral. Lines that point toward or away from the center mean the color is either undersaturated or oversaturated, respectively. Lateral lines mean colors are just being misinterpreted as other colors, such as purples being mistaken for blues.
| Cell Phone | Nokia E90 | HTC Mogul | BlackBerry 8800 |
| Score | 5.77 | 1.82 | 0.00 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
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N/A: Doesn't have a camera. |
| Cell Phone | Nokia N95 | Helio Ocean | Apple iPhone |
| Score | 6.95 | 6.66 | 5.22 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
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Noise (1.34)
To test for noise, we take a another series of pictures of the GretagMacbeth color chart, this time with varying degrees of light. We take our test captures at 3000 lux, 1500 lux, 500 lux, and 60 lux. We then use Imatest again, this time to judge how much noise is produced at each level. As seen in the table below, the E90 performed about average among comparison phones with cameras.
| Cell Phone | Score |
| Nokia E90 | 1.34 |
| HTC Mogul | 1.45 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | 0.00 |
| Nokia N95 | 1.42 |
| Helio Ocean | 1.14 |
| Apple iPhone | 1.20 |
Live Preview (3.0)
Unfortunately, since you can only use the camera when the phone is closed, your live preview is restricted to the tiny external screen. The live preview held up fairly well in regards to movement, exhibiting minimal lag and blurring during quick pans. The previewed picture seemed overly noisy, and sometimes the color was very noticeably shifted toward a yellow or blue. The overall live preview quality was far lower than the actual picture captured. As far as the display, there is a small menu that hides off the right side, along with descriptions of the two soft keys. The top features an icon for Camera/Video mode, and the bottom left contains memory card information. All displayed icons automatically hide when you depress the shutter button.
Unlocked Standby to First Shot (2.65)
Here we test how quickly a user could expect to snap a picture. We begin with the phone in a closed, unlocked standby. We then start a timer and take a picture of it. The captured image of the time represents how long the whole process took. We do many trials and average out the times. We found the E90 averaged two disparate times: 7.55 seconds and 5.4 seconds. The former time was achieved if the phone had to auto focus. When it didn't need to focus, the time was about two seconds faster. As the phone will need to focus most of the time, we've scored it based on the former result. Either way, the E90 is slow for a phone. Most of the time was either spent waiting for the camera interface to load, or for the picture to actually snap. This time could have been improved slightly if the shutter key was a shortcut for the camera application, but unfortunately it isn't.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Nokia E90 | 7.55 | 2.65 |
| HTC Mogul | 3.30 | 6.06 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | N/A: Doesn't have a camera. | 0.00 |
| Nokia N95 | 6.50 | 3.08 |
| Helio Ocean | 4.10 | 4.88 |
| Apple iPhone | 2.43 | 8.23 |
Shot to Shot Time (4.92)
Here we score a phone based on how quickly it can take pictures in a sequence. Fortunately for the E90, it has a good Burst mode; as long as you keep the shutter button held down, you can take as many pictures in a row as you want. Most phones require you to set the number of pictures beforehand, but take them all with just a quick shutter key press. Also, most phones take lower quality photos in Burst mode, but the E90 keeps its highest resolution. The downside of this approach is that the E90 can't take pictures very quickly, averaging 0.61 frames per second. This slow time is likely due to the maintained resolution and the initial auto focus. It's a double-edged sword; you can take lots of continuous pictures with the E90, but they will have bigger time gaps between them than other cell phones.
| Cell Phone | FPS | Score |
| Nokia E90 | 0.61 | 4.92 |
| HTC Mogul | 2.90 | 5.70 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | N/A: Doesn't have a camera. | 0.00 |
| Nokia N95 | 0.42 | 1.26 |
| Helio Ocean | 1.23 | 3.75 |
| Apple iPhone | 0.40 | 1.20 |
Shutter to Shot Time (8.1)
Here we test how long after pressing the shutter button it takes to actually capture the picture. As this is the case, we have discounted auto focus. On average, the E90 took 0.24 seconds to capture the image once the button was pressed. This is a fairly quick time. Chances are, if you've already focused on someone, you'll get the picture in before they sneeze or blink.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Nokia E90 | 0.24 | 8.1 |
| HTC Mogul | 0.21 | 9.52 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | N/A: Doesn't have a camera. | 0.00 |
| Nokia N95 | 1.00 | 2.00 |
| Helio Ocean | 0.60 | 3.33 |
| Apple iPhone | 0.40 | 5.00 |
Interface (7.0) The E90's camera interface is similar to other Series 60 devices. There is a line of options on the right, which contains a bevy of options: Scene modes, flash, timer, Burst mode, exposure compensation, white balance, color tone, ISO, contrast, and sharpness. It doesn't clutter up the screen with all these options right away, displaying only five at a time. Above and below this line of options are descriptions of the soft key functions, being exit and options, respectively. The list of options isn't very impressive. The only notable item is the Settings menu, where you can toggle image quality, if the picture gets automatically added to the album, if the captured image is displayed, default image name, extended digital zoom, capture chime, or memory. You can also restore defaults. These are a lot of options, but they are laid out in smart ways. Neither the on-screen menu nor the Settings menu feel overly large, and each feel more focused when compared to how other phones organize features.
As for other on-screen items, the top left has a small icon to denote if the camera is capturing stills or video, and the bottom left displays how many pictures can fit on the phone or memory card. Everything that's displayed hides automatically when the shutter key is pressed.
Photo Album Software Internal (6.0)
The E90's photo album is fairly comprehensive. From here you can rename, sort, organize into folders, or mark photos with a check mark. If the phone is open, the list of thumbnails and details (name, size, icon describing if the photo is stored on the memory card or phone) is on the left while the right side of the screen is home to a sizeable preview. While viewing a photo, you can rotate it or zoom in on places. You unfortunately can't save these changes, or even set a rotated/zoomed image as your wallpaper. This is a bit disappointing since the "Set as wallpaper" function only uses the middle third or so of the picture for the internal screen's background. Overall, though, we were impressed with the organization present in the E90's album.
Manual Control (4.0)
The E90 has quite a few options for hands-on photographers. As previously mentioned, users can fiddle around with Scene modes, flash, timer, sequence, exposure compensation, white balance, color tone, light sensitivity, contrast, and sharpness.
Zoom (1.0)
The E90 has a digital zoom. There are quite a few steps until you're fully zoomed in, but unfortunately no amount of digital zoom would score the E90 any additional points. Digital zoom isn't what most would consider a "real" zoom. The camera just crops and enlarges a section of the photo, which degrades resolution. Zoomed all the way in, pictures will be very pixellated and incredibly noisy.
Focus (5.0)
The E90 has basic auto focus. Just like most digital cameras, if you press down on the shutter button slightly, the phone will focus in on your target. It gives a soft click when it's finished focusing.
Flash (6.0)
The E90 has a good flash for a cell phone. Most phones' "flash" consists of an LED that remains on as long as the flash feature is enabled. We were pleased to see the E90 stays true to the function's name and actually flashes its LED.
Metering (2.0)
The E90 does have some metering capabilities, in the form of exposure compensation settings (the E90 refers to them as EV). In addition to the neutral setting, there are eight additional presets, four on either side, which provide up to two stops of exposure compensation either way.
White Balance (3.0)
The white balance on the E90 consists of four presets in addition to automatic: Sunny, Cloudy, Incandescent, and Fluorescent.
Image Handling (0.0)
The E90 doesn't have any image handling software to speak of. As previously discussed, you can rotate and zoom a picture while previewing it, but you unfortunately can't save these changes. Again, this would have been a useful feature to include, as the internal wallpaper only uses a small portion of the middle third of the picture.
Video
Overall Video Score (8.5)
The E90's video capture has full VGA resolution, 640 x 480, and a capture rate of 30 frames per second. This is impressive video quality. The phone's video settings would lead you to believe it's good enough to show on a TV, but we're not sure if we'd go that far; the resulting video will be washed out and have moderate noise. Even basic camcorders usurp the E90 in video quality, but for a phone, the E90 is top of the line; only the N95 captured better video. This would make the E90 a good pick if you want an all-in-one device to capture videos for later use.
Video Resolution (12.13)
We measure video resolution in much the same way as still resolution. Instead of separate captures, we simply pull a selection of frames out of the final video. The E90 scored 351.4 line widths per picture height (lw/ph) horizontally and 345.2 lw/ph vertically. Though this isn't as impressive as the N95, this is still really good video quality for a phone. The E90 managed to outdo the other two phones capable of video capture by quite a large margin. The video is almost good enough to watch on TV without issue; most phones ' captured video turns into an incoherent mob of pixels when viewed on a TV.
| Cell Phone | lw/ph horizontal/vertical | Score |
| Nokia E90 | 351.4/345.2 | 12.13 |
| HTC Mogul | 220.9/137.8 | 3.04 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | N/A: Doesn't have a camera. | 0.0 |
| Nokia N95 | 336.5/428.1 |
14.41 |
| Helio Ocean | 325/200 | 4.53 |
| Apple iPhone | N/A: Unable to capture video. | 0.0 |
Video Compression (4.0)
The E90 records videos in MP4 format. It also has the option to capture in 3GP.
Interface (9.0)
The video capture interface is standard Series 60 fare. If you're familiar with the camera's interface, you'll be familiar with this interface as well. The list of options on the right is quite a bit shorter, only offering Scene modes, white balance, and color tone. Again, the top soft key is set to exit, the bottom to options. Options leads to video settings, where you can fool around with the video quality, turn on stabilization, toggle audio recording, and reach the camera Settings menu.
Manual Control (2.0)
There are fewer manual controls for video. In fact, there's just one real manual control: white balance. As with the camera, there are four presents and an automatic setting.
Zoom (1.0)
The E90 has digital zoom, which is only good enough for one point. If the E90 had optical zoom like the N93/N93i, it would've received five points. This is because optical zoom actually provides zoom functionality, while digital zoom just crops and enlarges, degrading video quality.
Editing (0.0)
The E90 doesn't offer any video editing software.
Modes (6.0)
As for modes, the E90 has a few. It has specific settings to optimize video for e-mail or MMS. There is also a single Scene mode: night.
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