Nokia N82 Cell Phone Review - Imaging

Alfredo Padilla
Published on February 05, 2008 Comment on this

Resolution (7.59)

To test the resolution of photos taken by the Nokia N82's five megapixel camera we took photos of an industry standard resolution chart and used Imatest software to analyze them. Imatest produces a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph), which indicates how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they blur together. The Nokia N82 scored 1307 lw/ph horizontal and 1288 lw/ph vertical. This is an excellent score, you can see below that none of our comparison phones performed nearly as well in this test.

Of course none of these phones have an auto-focus camera and the highest megapixel count of any is two. A more appropriate comparison is the Nokia N95. The U.S. 3G version of the N95 scored 1355 lw/ph horizontal and 1388 lw/ph vertical in this test, a slightly better but very comparable score to the Nokia N82. Not surprising given that both sport similar camera specs and probably very similar hardware. Regardless of what you're comparing it to we were very pleased with the Nokia N82's performance in this test, it's one of the best scores we've seen from a camera phone.

Cell Phone	Nokia N82	Nokia N81 8GB	BlackBerry Pearl 8130
Score	7.59	1.16	4.27
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1307/1288	511/534	980/450
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Palm Centro	Razr2 V8	Apple iPhone
Score	1.41	4.29	4.18
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	581/596	982/982	970/879
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (5.45)
To test the ability of the Nokia N82's camera to reproduce colors we take photos of the industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart and once again use Imatest to analyze the photos. Imatest takes the photo of the chart produced by the Nokia N82 and compares it to the original chart to find variance between the two.

Above you see the chart produced by Imatest after it has completed this comparison. A slightly easier to read iteration of this data is produced in the chart below, which Imatest also creates. In this chart the squares indicate the ideal color while circles show the colors captured by the Nokia N82.

As you can see the Nokia N82 performed reasonably well in this test. There was some drift in the blues and reds, and the whites are a little off, but nothing major enough to cause us pause. The Nokia N82's high megapixel count doesn't help it as much in this test, however, as its overall performance was not head and shoulders above our comparison phones. In fact you can see that the Palm Centro's 1.3 megapixel camera performed much better in this test than the N82 with the iPhone and Pearl putting up similar scores. This just goes to show that megapixels aren't everything, optics and software processing count as well. That's not to say that the Nokia N82's performance in this test was bad, rather it was just slightly above average.

Cell Phone	Nokia N82	Nokia N81 8GB	BlackBerry Pearl 8130
Score	5.45	3.21	5.13
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Palm Centro	Razr2 V8	Apple iPhone
Score	8.08	4.41	5.22
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (0.85)
To test the amount of noise produced by the Nokia N82's camera we take photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at varying lighting levels and use Imatest to analyze how much noise is produced at each. We consider both the total amount of noise at each lighting level and consistency across lighting levels in our final score. The Nokia N82's performance in this test was not particularly impressive. It displayed higher than average amounts of noise at brighter lighting levels and noise jumped more than 100% between our brightest and lowest lighting level.

We expect to see more noise on phones that have higher megapixel sensors simply because more data is picked up so there's more room for noise to appear. On the other hand the Nokia N95 with US 3G performed better on this test, not displaying the jump in noise at our lowest lighting level that we saw on the N82. That being said no camera phone does very well in this test, as you can see below none of our comparison phones performed much better than the N82.

Cell Phone	Score
Nokia N82	0.85
Nokia N81 8GB	0.47
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	1.08
Palm Centro	0.91
Razr2 V8	0.91
Apple iPhone	1.20

Live Preview (7.0)
The Nokia N82's live preview generally does a very good job. The refresh rate is excellent, so even when you're panning around you get a sharp reproduction of what you're looking at. We didn't detect any major pixelation or artifacts. The one issue we did see was that colors in the final image looked a bit more saturated that what we saw in the live preview, but this is a minor issue. Overall we were very happy with the N82's live preview.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (4.26)
This test measure how quickly it takes to go from the home screen until you have captured a photo. This is a good test for those who like to pull their phone out and take a quick photo. The Nokia N82 didn't perform very well in this test, taking 4.7 seconds to start up the camera application and capture a photo. You can see below that this is the slowest time amongst our comparison phones, although we should also note that fixed focus cameras like the N81 and Razr2 V8 didn't do too much worse. This is important because the N82's auto-focus camera takes more time to make sure that the scene is in focus before taking a shot, which takes more time. Compared to other auto-focus cameras like the N95 or AT&T Tilt the Nokia N82 is middling, much faster than the N95's 6.5 second time but still slower than the AT&T Tilt's 3.7 second time.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N82	4.7	4.26
Nokia N81 8GB	4.5	4.44
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	3.16	6.33
Palm Centro	3.8	5.26
Razr2 V8	4.56	4.39
Apple iPhone	2.43	8.23

Shot to Shot Time (2.07)
Shot to shot time is a measure of how quickly you can take a series of photos. When possible we do this test using a camera's burst mode, which the Nokia N82 does have. Using this burst mode we were able to take six photos in 8.7 seconds, which works out to 0.69 frames per second (fps). As you can see below this isn't terrible, we've seen a lot worse, but on the other hand it's nowhere near the best we've seen from phones, which can get as high as 2 fps. As with our other timed tests for the camera the Nokia N82 is slowed down by the fact it's camera is auto-focus, so it takes some extra time before it starts capturing photos. We should also note, however, that the poor scores put up by our comparison phones is mostly due to the fact that they don't have burst modes, so we had to take the series of photos manually.

Cell Phone	FPS	Score
Nokia N82	0.69	2.07
Nokia N81 8GB	0.9	2.70
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	0.34	1.02
Palm Centro	0.28	0.84
Razr2 V8	0.58	1.74
Apple iPhone	0.4	1.20

Shutter to Shot Time (1.11)
Shutter to shot time is the amount of time it takes to take a photo once you've pressed the capture button. On an auto-focus camera like the Nokia N82 this measure can vary depending on whether you count the time it takes to focus or just the time it takes to capture once you are already in focus. Because we want to give users an impression of the total time it takes to capture a photo we use the former time. The Nokia N82 took 1.8 seconds to take a shot, including the time it took to put it into focus. For those who want the time without focusing it's closer to 0.8 seconds. The Nokia N82's 1.8 second time is pretty slow, as we expect from an auto-focus camera. You can see below that our comparison phones, all of which have fixed focus cameras, did much better on this test. You'll also note, however, that even if you take the auto-focus out of the equation the Nokia N82 is still pretty slow. The point here is that you better hope your subject sits still for a second or two because you won't be able to take super quick shots with the N82.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N82	1.8	1.11
Nokia N81 8GB	0.17	11.76
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	0.48	4.17
Palm Centro	0.88	2.27
Razr2 V8	0.39	5.13
Apple iPhone	0.4	5.00

Interface (9.0)

The camera interface on the Nokia N82 is the same we've seen from Nokia's N-Series phones for awhile now. The entire screen is used as a viewfinder with some icons in the top and bottom left corners showing you what mode the camera is in, your resolution settings and how many photos you can capture. On the right side of the screen are the two labels for the soft keys, exit on top and options at the bottom, with a strip of icons in between that you navigate using the D-Pad. These icons are the great bit about the Nokia N82's camera interface as they give you quick access to most camera functions like scene modes, flash, timers and color, amongst others. One new icon that we have not seen before is a toggle to show a gird on screen, useful for lining up shots. We've been fans of the Nokia N-Series camera interface for awhile and there's nothing in the N82 to make us change our mind, it's a very easy to use and elegant camera interface.

Photo Album Software Internal (7.0)

The Nokia N82's photo album software is the gallery that is used on other N-Series devices. This software is very pretty, it presents your photos in a rotating carousel of images that you can navigate through using the D-Pad. Unfortunately it's got some practical issues that we don't like. First of all it's rather slow, now this issue has been addressed somewhat in newer handsets like the N82, but it still takes longer than we would like to launch and create all of your thumbnails. The other problem is that file management isn't gallery's strong suit. You can create albums and move items into them, but this is a rather clunky process that involves using the overly large soft key menu. We would have preferred a more elegant interface. Aside from these issues Gallery does as good a job as any other album software we've seen on other devices.

Manual Control (2.0)
The Nokia N82 offers you with various scene modes like such as landscape, portrait, sports and night, but that's about it. There's no manual white balance, shutter priority or aperture priority available.

Zoom (1.0)
The Nokia N82 has a 20x digital zoom available. Given that it takes fairly large five megapixel photos this is actually more useful than most cell phones. That's because all digital zoom does is crop and enlarge a portion of the scene, just as you could do on your desktop software. With a larger image you can enlarge more without losing too much detail. That being said it's still not as nice as having an optical zoom.

Focus (5.0)
The Nokia N82 has an auto-focus camera, which means that when you're taking photos the camera will attempt to put the scene in focus for you. Like a real camera you can press the shutter button down part way to put the scene into focus and then press it down completely when you're satisfied with what you see. This produces much better photos than most camera phones that use fixed focus lenses, which means what you see is what you get. That being said the extra time it takes to focus also slows the camera down a bit, as you saw in our speed tests.

Flash (8.0)

One of the Nokia N82's upgrades over other N-Series devices like the N95 is the improved flash. Unlike the rather weak LED flashes that we see on most cell phones the N82 has a proper Xenon flash. Using the flash we were able to take photos that came out reasonably well, for a cell phone, from as much as six feet away in a completely darkened environment. In a dimly lit room we were able to maintain decent quality up to ten feet away. This is without a doubt the best flash we've seen on a mobile phone to date, although we should note that Sony's Cybershot lineup of camera phones has been using Xenon flashes for awhile now. For comparisons sake the LED flashes found on most cell phones are really only useful up to two or three feet away, and even then you're getting pretty poor quality. In contrast to those phones we were very pleased with the Nokia N82's Xenon flash, although it's still not as good as a dedicated camera with it's more powerful flash.

Metering (2.0)
One area where Nokia has lagged behind a little is in offering metering controls on their high end camera phones. HTC, by contrast, has been putting metering controls on their phones for several months now. Of course very few of HTC's camera phones can match the quality of the N82, with the AT&T Tilt coming the closest amongst those we've reviewed, but that doesn't mean that we don't want proper metering controls as well. For those who don't know metering controls allow you to control from which point or points in a scene light is judged. This allows you to adjust the brightness of a scene for a particular area. What the N82 does offer are Exposure Compensation controls, which are basically just a glorified form of brightness control.

White Balance (2.0)
Like most camera phones the Nokia N82 offers users a variety of white balance presets including sunny, cloudy, incandescent and flourescent. More advanced evaluative white balance options are not available.

Image Handling (8.0)
Nokia's N-Series lineup has been strong in terms of image handling options and the N82 is no different. When editing a photo you can crop, adjust sharpness, rotate, adjust brightness and contrast, fix red-eye or resize. These are far more options than most phones offer you. You're usually lucky if you can rotate a photo.

Video

Overall Video Score (8.5)
The quality of video taken by the Nokia N82 is amongst the best we've seen from a mobile phone. Like the Nokia N95 the N82 captures video at full VGA (640 x 480) resolution at 30 frames per second (fps). This is significantly better than the next step down we see in most mobile phones which is QVGA (320 x 240) at 15 fps. Video taken by the N82 is smooth and displays very little pixelation or artifacts. You would be fine putting it up on youtube and it would even look decent on a small monitor or television set, although the term decent correlates more with watchable than good. The quality of the video is about the same as what you would get on most consumer digital cameras, but is still nowhere near as good as you would get with even a low end HD camcorders.

Video Resolution (20.01)
To test video resolution we capture video of the same industry standard resolution chart we use for our still photo resolution test. We take frames from this video and run them through the Imatest software to produce a line widths per pixel height (lw/ph) score, which tells us how many alternating black and and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together. The Nokia N82 put up the best video resolution score we've ever seen at 434 lw/ph horizontal and 461 lw/ph vertical. You can see from our table below that this is much better than any of our comparison phones. It's also significantly better than the Nokia N95, which scored 331.1 lw/ph horizontal and 428.1 lw/ph vertical. We were quite pleased with the N82's performance in this test, it's set a new standard for video capture on a cell phone.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
Nokia N82	434/461	20.01
Nokia N81 8GB	247/272	6.72
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	171/190	3.25
Palm Centro	249/274	6.82
Razr2 V8	168/217	3.65
Apple iPhone	n/a - no video capture	0.00

Video Compression (4.0)
The Nokia N82 captures video in Mpeg-4 format for the most part, with four different quality settings available. There's also a setting available for MMS video which captures in the more compressed 3GP format, which is a mobile standard. Most users should find these options more than sufficient for their needs.

Interface (8.0)

The video capture interface on the Nokia N82 is pretty much the same as that found in the stills camera interface with the notable difference that there are far fewer icons available on the right side of the display to adjust settings. Here your only options are scene modes, white balance and color tone. It's not surprising to see fewer options available and, if anything, it makes the interface even easier to use.

Manual Control (0.0)
The Nokia N82 doesn't offer users any manual controls for video capture.

Zoom (1.0)
As with still photos the Nokia N82 offers users a digital zoom, which just crops and enlarges a portion of the scene. Given that video captures at a far lower resolution than stills on the N82 the digital zoom is of very little use.

Editing (6.0)
Editing options for video on the N82 are much better than what most phones offer, which is none. On the N82, though, you can cut sections of videos out and add audio tracks, special effects and intro screens. It's not as good as what you get in terms of editing options for stills photos, but on the other hand it's a freaking cell phone. Given that it's pretty decent.

Modes (4.0)
The Nokia N82 offers a shooting mode for night as well as a preset for capturing MMS video.

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