Telepocalypse

A picture is worth a ... thousand dollars

Disclosure: I've done consulting work for Nokia, and am guilty of conspiring to pimp Nokia phones to bloggers. You've been warned!

You might have picked up that Nokia are slipping nice phones into the hands of various bloggerati courtesy of Andy's carefully-crafted PR2.0 efforts. But I got a free N90 some time earlier as a thanks for some good advice I gave them last year. So nah, nah sucks! ;) Anyhow, I've got a commercial interest. Thankfully.

All the pics here are taken with the N90, apart from the picture of the phone itself. No retouching of any kind has been applied. Click on them for the full-size originals, although bear in mind that bandwidth does cost me money.

The 3700 year old stone Machrie Moor stone circle, Arran, Scotland, 1 January 2006.

This isn't a review of the N90, but more an account of my experiences of living with the device in my pocket for 6 months. In a nutshell, the N90 is a standard Symbian series 60 smartphone with an enhanced main screen, quality optical unit with 2 megapixel camera on a twist cap, and a swivel and twist cover and external second colour screen. There are plenty of real N90 reviews out there that recap the functionality. I haven't read a single one. Nor have I bothered to read the manual. These are just my thoughts from being a casual user.

Firstly, understand that this is a camera with a smartphone dangling underneath, not the other way round. In fact, the "smartphone" bit suffers from all the usual issues of smartphones (non-standard UIs, different screen sizes, incompatible software, awkward activation and anti-piracy schemes, lack of memory, users simply don't care, blah blah) that have kept the market small. I don't really use any of the smartphone features, except to play Frozen Bubble whilst waiting to collect take-out food from the local Thai restaurant. But then I don't have a TV, and the radio's resting for a year or three. So we're not normal here at Geddes central.

I enjoy photography, without being a fetishist about it. Calling it a hobby would be too grand. So this phone has been of quite a lot of interest. Quite possibly you'll have seen on old blog posts some of the outputs from the crapcams on the other phones knocking around the house -- a Motorola V525 (nice phone but mediocre pictures, way too fuzzy at the corners) and Sony Ericsson T630 (appalling camera, great UI). The difference is enormous -- it's almost unfair to talk of them both in the same category.

Welcome to Edinburgh -- all walking distance from my home.

The general quality of the camera is pretty good. It's not up to the standard of a dedicated digicam, but it's not totally outclassed either. That said, if someone could sprinkle a bit of Canon's magic pixel dust on the successors to the N90, it would be welcome. Yes, it struggles with high contrast, has barrell distortion, chromatic aberrations, noise, and shutter lag. But you won't care, trust me. It's exceeds your expectations too often.

Two megapixels is a great size. They're big enough to fill all but the biggest PC screens, and make great 6×4 printouts. My mum has a Sony DSC-U20 camera, a wee jewel that Sony has discontinued. (The successor was camera selection of the year by Good Experience guru Mark Hurst last year.) Again, 2MP, and great photos in a tiny, cheap, convenient package. Why pay for more?

The performance in low light is quite commendable. The LED flash is certainly no embarassment, as you can see from one of my earlier posts of the railway staircase. It tends to over-expose when close up, though.

There are a few big lessons I've drawn from this device.

It's a business device masquerading as a consumer phone

At client workshops and with colleagues, I always end the day by snapping all the flip charts and whiteboards. The resolution is just right for this, and with a modicum of care with lighting and keeping still even my scrawl is legible. Plus, carrying a camera around is a great means of capturing events and situations that are so much better communicated in pictures than words. Death to the 7-bullet Powerpoint! Stick up your own pictures that show 'em directly.

Full explanation of this chart available for modest consulting fee.

It's not just that you carry it with you outside...

Everyone knows the received wisdom that compensating benefit of camerphones is you always have them with you and charged up. But the unexpected finding for me is that many of my best candid pictures are inside my home. When my elder daughter was splayed out climbing on the edges of the hot bath with a great big 'look at me' grin, I'm definitely not leaving the room to go hunting for the digicam and seeing if the battery is charged. Whilst mobile telephony is all about "third places", I suspect mobile photography is more mundane home-based, particularly for those with children. I find that the "whip it out of your pocket" nature of a camera phone is very different from the reverance afforded to a dedicated camera it its own little pouch. I've taken far more spur-of-the-moment records of the kids than ever before.

Laima and Daina, my two daughters.

Video killed the photo star

The N90 does a great job with video. It seems to cope with lighting problems better than with photos, the audio comes through clear, the form factor is just great (particularly that you can swivel the top for a photo, and then open it up for a video). I think the best memories of my small monsters will be the videos. (I'm saving them up on gold CDs to use as blackmail tools for misbehaving teens in a decade or so. Clean your room, girl, or your baby vids go on Flickr and I'll tell your friends!)

Pixels matter

I used to cringe when taking photos with the other phonecams, and groan at seeing the results on a PC screen. Although you'll get your share of duds with the N90, there will also be plenty of great shots that you'll be proud of. But the good thing about lots of pixels is you can throw 'em away. Crop, downsize, and you've got something usable. I don't think I'd buy the N90 for my personal use (it's overkill for someone who works from home and goes out with family, and doesn't give his mobile number to many people), but a good quality camera is now near the top of the list of necessary features. In fact, I wish Nokia would stick out a phone that just does great pictures, voice and SMS. I'm sure there's a market.

Christmas fair, with Scott Monument in the background.

Ants are your new photographic friends (almost)

The absolute highlight of the camera is its macro performance which is quite exceptional. Furthermore, it's all automatic, with no macro mode to faff around with:

Taken at Butterfly World, Edinburgh, Scotland. March 2006.

Size isn't everything

I don't find the weight of the phone or its size an issue. Indeed, compare it to my first cellphone, a Motorola mr601.

1997 vs. 2006: La plus ca change...

Apparently my old Moto was quite a cool phone at the time, for those without a Startac budget.

It's not perfect, but that's life

There are some annoyances to the N90. The biggest, to me, is the ridiculously loud branded jingle noise it plays when you turn it on. Sometimes it randomly doesn't store a shot (you can generally tell), or there's a strange 3-way lag between pressing the shutter button, the shutter noise, and the actual picture being taken (by which time you've moved the camera and get a blur). The image transfer is a bit autistic -- I always go through the same old sequence of marking all pictures, sending via Bluetooth and deleting. There's no vibrate function, which is a problem if I'm walking about with headphones on. The battery life is OK, but nothing to shout about. The lens cover could do with being easily snapped-out and replaceable. You can't fix the exposure by half-pressing the shutter. Niggly stuff.

Bottom line

It's mine. I like it. I'm keepng it.

No, you can't have it. Go get your own.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 3:23 PM

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