[ToTTenTranz]

Originally Posted by JohnH

Increasing sensor resolution to these levels is of debatable value. Not only do you get increased photon noise you also have a greater proportion of non active area between sensor sites (= waisted light) and you get increased colour bleed between adajacent primary colour sites.

Yes SW can apply some clever algorithms but there are limits to what is achievable given the net degradation of the data retreived from individual sensor sites i.e. garbage in garbage out will start to apply.

I also doubt these phones would have optics capable of resolving more than 5-8MPixels (being optimistic) so the zoom arguement is unlikely playout very well either.

Basically there are very good reasons why digital SLR's have started reversing the rush for more pixels, these reasons are as equally applicable to a low cost camera phone as they are to a high end SLR.

John.

I would advise to look at the whitepapers for the "Pureview" imaging tech before jumping to fast and "cheap" conclusions like that.
All the criticisms you made are addressed in there.

Just because it isn't using the exact same approach as DSLRs, it doesn't mean it's "bad technology".
It's not a "numbers game" either. Nokia has stated very clearly that the purpose is to take better 5 and 8MP pictures (5MP is the camera's default setting, btw).

Originally Posted by hoho

My main point was had they kept the sensor at 8/11MP while increasing it's size to where it is they would have got quite a bit better image quality than with the thing they have done (unless they broke physics). Pretty much the only thing they get with it is zoom that doesn't get too blurry. Without zoom the image quality will quite definitely not be as good as it could be.

Are you 100% sure that "pure" 8MP would be better than 8MP oversampled from 38MP at the same sensor size?
I'm in no way interested in this Nokia 808, but I kind of think Nokia usually doesn't make drastic mistakes regarding the imaging part of their camera phones. That certainly wasn't the case with N95, N86 and N8, where all these devices took the crown for best available camera in a phone.

[ToTTenTranz]

Here are some "unprocessed" photo samples:

http://cdn.conversations.nokia.com.s...2/Archive2.zip

Regarding the technical specs, the whitepapers say there's a "special companion processor" within the camera sensor itself that "handles pixel scaling" before getting them to the image processor. This should be the case for 5 and 8MP modes, but what about the 38MP mode?
If it's using the BCM2763, can it be sending two parts of 19MPixel images that are then joined together?

[hoho]

Originally Posted by ToTTenTranz

Are you 100% sure that "pure" 8MP would be better than 8MP oversampled from 38MP at the same sensor size?

Yes for the reasons JohnH pointed out.

Originally Posted by ToTTenTranz

I'm in no way interested in this Nokia 808, but I kind of think Nokia usually doesn't make drastic mistakes regarding the imaging part of their camera phones

My guess is they wanted to get zooming working as well as possible and that will be helped by the increased pixel count. But as I said that 86mm^2 sensor with just 8MP would have provided higher quality when not using zoom.

I'm sure the phone will have higher image quality than N8 but that will come from the increased sensor size and not from anything else. Had they not increased pixel count the non-zoomed quality would have been even better.

[ToTTenTranz]

Originally Posted by hoho

My guess is they wanted to get zooming working as well as possible and that will be helped by the increased pixel count. But as I said that 86mm^2 sensor with just 8MP would have provided higher quality when not using zoom.

I'm sure the phone will have higher image quality than N8 but that will come from the increased sensor size and not from anything else. Had they not increased pixel count the non-zoomed quality would have been even better.

Yes, although that doesn't take credit from the "Pureview" solution for a smartphone implementation.

The N8 achieved standalone camera quality without optical zoom.
The 808 aims to achieve a better quality camera, with "zoomed picture/video" quality on par with standalone cameras that use optical zoom.
This is the justification for the increased resolution. Nokia isn't aiming for DSLR performance, yet.

There's also the thact that the 808 takes high-profile h.264 1080p videos at up to 25mbps with dolby digital encoded sound using stereo microfones that can take up to 140dB.
The thought of taking smartphone videoclips that are worth watching in a home theater (and not just a computer screen and tablet) is really nice.

[wco81]

Well, if you've seen 1080p videos out of DSLRs, it's not clear they're worth watching on a big screen.

If I take shots with my D7000 and then record a video at the same location, just the thumbnails show the video quality is poor. Not really unexpected but to make video worth watching, you have to have it lit, miked and planned well in advance, then do good editing on it.

Most cell phone videos are going to end up on Youtube anyways, so 1080p resolution and DD sound without production values?

[Dr Evil]

N8 already had superb sound quality on its video recordings. High volume live music sounded good on it, I really like to see this 808 in action.

[ToTTenTranz]

Originally Posted by wco81

Well, if you've seen 1080p videos out of DSLRs, it's not clear they're worth watching on a big screen.

Perhaps because they're very poorly encoded?

Originally Posted by wco81

If I take shots with my D7000 and then record a video at the same location, just the thumbnails show the video quality is poor.

You can tell the video quality of a 1080p clip is poor from looking at the thumbnail?
I'm sorry, that sounds silly...

[mboeller]

a few photos and videos:

http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_808_pu...-news-3905.php

[wco81]

In comparisons to the static shots of the same scenes taken at the same time, yes.

[hoho]

Originally Posted by wco81

Well, if you've seen 1080p videos out of DSLRs, it's not clear they're worth watching on a big screen.

What DSLR and what optics did you use? There is a HUGE difference between different cameras and obviously their optics. Hell, you can screw up a nice result by a simple wrong configuration from the camera menu

Also judging video quality by it's thumbnails is so out of this world that I'm not even sure what to say about it.

[wco81]

I'm just saying compared to the 16 Mp shots taken with the same camera, the video looks fuzzy.

Plus they're handheld, so not the best capture.

THey probably look fine on a big screen but a slide show of stills from the same camera probably looks better.

[hoho]

Originally Posted by wco81

I'm just saying compared to the 16 Mp shots taken with the same camera, the video looks fuzzy.

Without knowing anything about the conditions and settings used (aperture, ISO for movie+photo and shutter speed for photo) it's meaningless to try to compare the two. When I shoot videos with my 60d it generally pumps up the ISO compared to photo taking in same conditions, especially when shutter speed for photo taking approaches filming FPS.

[JohnH]

Originally Posted by ToTTenTranz

I would advise to look at the whitepapers for the "Pureview" imaging tech before jumping to fast and "cheap" conclusions like that.
All the criticisms you made are addressed in there.

Just because it isn't using the exact same approach as DSLRs, it doesn't mean it's "bad technology".
It's not a "numbers game" either. Nokia has stated very clearly that the purpose is to take better 5 and 8MP pictures (5MP is the camera's default setting, btw).

Interesting, where did I jump to "fast and cheap concluesions"? I pointed out the real technicals issues that occur when sensor site size is reduced. Nowhere does the nokia marketing address these issues e.g. oversampling does not address the issue of increased colour bleed and will not entirely compensate for the increased photon noise that comes from decreased sensor site size (the increased dead area between sites alone sees to that).

Now, if the increased number of pixels is coming entirely from the increased sensor area then I would agree that this should result in improved image quality.

[ToTTenTranz]

Originally Posted by JohnH

Interesting, where did I jump to "fast and cheap concluesions"?

Where you questioned the validity of increasing sensor resolution, without knowing why it was done in the first place (hence the "fast and cheap"):

Originally Posted by JohnH

Increasing sensor resolution to these levels is of debatable value.
(...)
I also doubt these phones would have optics capable of resolving more than 5-8MPixels (being optimistic) so the zoom arguement is unlikely playout very well either.

Here's an interview from Damian Dinning:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/28/t...erience-nokia/

[JohnH]

Originally Posted by ToTTenTranz

Where you questioned the validity of increasing sensor resolution, without knowing why it was done in the first place (hence the "fast and cheap"):

Try reading eveything that I wrote rather than picking out one small part of it, here it is for you,

Increasing sensor resolution to these levels is of debatable value. Not only do you get increased photon noise you also have a greater proportion of non active area between sensor sites (= waisted light) and you get increased colour bleed between adajacent primary colour sites.

Everythign I say here relates to increasing sensor resolution while maintaining the same area, it isn't a "fast and cheap" comment as you keep insisting, it IS technically accurate wrt the current state of the art. My only mistake here was to assume that you had the intelligence to associate this with packing more pixels into the same size sensor.

Now, the video contains one useful peice information i.e. that the sensor appears to have increased in size in proportion to the increase in the number of pixels. Given this it comes as absolutely no surprise that they're getting high quality images out of the camera as more area means more light incedent on the sensor without a reduction in the quality of the data taken from each sensor site...

[ToTTenTranz]

Originally Posted by JohnH

Everythign I say here relates to increasing sensor resolution while maintaining the same area, it isn't a "fast and cheap" comment as you keep insisting, it IS technically accurate wrt the current state of the art. My only mistake here was to assume that you had the intelligence to associate this with packing more pixels into the same size sensor.

I wasn't intelligent enough to associate random info about optical sensor technology to whatever you imagined it would connect to; you weren't intelligent enough to read why there is increased resolution instead of just increasing sensor size before pulling the trigger on criticizing the resolution increase, etc.
Lots of intelligence lacking in this discussion, as you can see.

It could be worse, at least our posture and arguing capablities haven't gone down to a point where we're spewing insults at each other, wouldn't you agree?




Now back to the topic:
Interview with the troj.. I mean, Stephen Elop:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/28/t...mwc-2012-vide/

At ~3m30s, he clearly states that the 808 is just an "experiment" on the imaging technology in order to pass it on to WP7 devices, just like the N9 was an "experiment" on some user experience implementations to pass on to WP7 devices.
I wonder if this also means the device will be made as scarce as the N9 and N900.


Too bad that people were totally onto N9's user interface and 808's imaging capabilities, but very few people are onto WP7..
With a total of 2.7 million WP7 phones sold throughout Q4 2011 (where Nokia sold 900k units), while Symbian phones sold some 18 million during the same period, I wonder which one is the "burning platform".

Another interesting remark in Ahonen's post: despite the artificiallly increased price and scarce availability, Nokia sold 2x more N9 units than all Nokia WP7 units combined.
Again, "burning platform"...

[Helmore]

Originally Posted by ToTTenTranz

Now back to the topic:
Interview with the troj.. I mean, Stephen Elop:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/28/t...mwc-2012-vide/

At ~3m30s, he clearly states that the 808 is just an "experiment" on the imaging technology in order to pass it on to WP7 devices, just like the N9 was an "experiment" on some user experience implementations to pass on to WP7 devices.
I wonder if this also means the device will be made as scarce as the N9 and N900.


Too bad that people were totally onto N9's user interface and 808's imaging capabilities, but very few people are onto WP7..
With a total of 2.7 million WP7 phones sold throughout Q4 2011 (where Nokia sold 900k units), while Symbian phones sold some 18 million during the same period, I wonder which one is the "burning platform".

Another interesting remark in Ahonen's post: despite the artificiallly increased price and scarce availability, Nokia sold 2x more N9 units than all Nokia WP7 units combined.
Again, "burning platform"...

I'm not going to claim that Windows Phone will be a massive success, but I think it's a bit premature to start drawing conclusions about WP's success from just the sales figures of Q4 2011. If sales figures for Windows Phones devices haven't grown a lot by this time next year, then yes I would agree with your conclusion. That said, I have a bit of an interest in WP's success, as I have a Samsung Omnia 7 myself (was pretty cheap without a contract too).

As for the image sensor in the Nokia 808, the facts Nokia provided state that it has a pixel site size of 1,4 µm, which coincidentally is the same as the image sensor on the iPhone 4S and I think most people will agree that the iPhone 4S takes pretty decent pictures. And yes, I realize that not all pixels are created equal even if they're the same size, but I would think that Nokia know's their stuff about image sensors.

[hoho]

WP is more than a year old. Just Nokia released their stuff late last year, others were selling long before that.

Though seeing the "stillborn" N9 with it's very high price sell several times more than WP7 stuff was rather amusing.

[JohnH]

Originally Posted by ToTTenTranz

I wasn't intelligent enough to associate random info about optical sensor technology to whatever you imagined it would connect to; you weren't intelligent enough to read why there is increased resolution instead of just increasing sensor size before pulling the trigger on criticizing the resolution increase, etc.
Lots of intelligence lacking in this discussion, as you can see.

Nothing random in the information, it is directly relevant to the whole "megapixel" discussion, all you had to say was that they hadn't reduced the sensor site size (the obvious intelligently thought out response), something that wasn't mentioned in the marketing paper you linked to by the way. But, instead you try to pass it off as a "cheap" response because it doesn't fit with your world view, of course we've never seen that from you before have we...

[Helmore]

Originally Posted by JohnH

Nothing random in the information, it is directly relevant to the whole "megapixel" discussion, all you had to say was that they hadn't reduced the sensor site size (the obvious intelligently thought out response), something that wasn't mentioned in the marketing paper you linked to by the way. But, instead you try to pass it off as a "cheap" response because it doesn't fit with your world view, of course we've never seen that from you before have we...

I'm not entirely sure, I've no idea what the sensor site size on the Nokia N8 is, but I believe that the sensor site size in the Nokia 808 is smaller than on the N8, but not to the extend that the increase in megapixels would have you believe. I mean, they increased the pixel sensor size by 2.5 times while increasing the megapixel count by around 5 times.

EDIT: I just looked it up, the Nokia N8 has a sensor site size of 1.75 µm and the Nokia 808 has a 1.4 µm site size.

[JohnH]

Originally Posted by Helmore

I'm not entirely sure, I've no idea what the sensor site size on the Nokia N8 is, but I believe that the sensor site size in the Nokia 808 is smaller than on the N8, but not to the extend that the increase in megapixels would have you believe. I mean, they increased the pixel sensor size by 2.5 times while increasing the megapixel count by around 5 times.

EDIT: I just looked it up, the Nokia N8 has a sensor site size of 1.75 µm and the Nokia 808 has a 1.4 µm site size.

That's interesting, would have to get hold of the relative active area of the sites to determine how much extra noise the size reduction would introduce, but naively you might be looking at a 30-40% reduction in site efficiency, should be more then compenstated for by a 2.5x growth in sensor area.

[ToTTenTranz]

And it starts:

Nokia 808 Pureview not coming to the US.

[dagamer]

Originally Posted by ToTTenTranz

And it starts:

Nokia 808 Pureview not coming to the US.

Is anyone really surprised?

[french toast]

This at least shows that Microkia is still innovating behind the scenes, they have a lot of top quality engineers there that think outside the box, ive stated it here before but Microkia shoves a HUGE proportion of its budget into R&D, more than APPLE and i think microsoft...well at least untill the 2009/2010 timeframe...



http://www.intomobile.com/2011/02/03/nokias-rd-budget-waaaaay-bigger-than-competition/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/01/m_and_a_beats_r_and_d/

Microkia's problem was getting all these solutions forward into phones..constrast that to Apple who squeeze every last ounce of profit out of their R&D expenditure...
So with that being said, its nice to see some of that massive wad of cash come through with something that blows the competition out of the water and actually captures the imagination of the press/public...as evidenced with the MWC gadget of the show award.

I don't think another company would be so bloody crazy to spend 5 years developing something unique like this for a bloody phone...think back to what the phone industry was doing camera wise then??...
Thats what made Microkia the unique company it was, and also the biggest phone wise..(which it still is)


What we now need from Microkia is some up to date processor components, up to date screen resolutions, NFC for WP, and hopefully that genius sliding feature from MEEGO...that was awesome..oh and do away with on screen buttons..another thing Meego introduced, but Android has already copied with ICS.


For those who keep slagging off Symbian..they should actually take a hard look at recent additions like Belle, i think it looks bloody fantastic, is fully featured apart form the dying flash/low res screens and is the most resource efficient...the 701 for instance flys on a 1ghz SINGLE CORE ARM 11. imagine what a duel core Krait would do!?...

EDIT; what we also need from Microkia (and in particular Microsoft..) is some top quality AA games that are worthy for the XBOX LIVE monika....the current crop are just not worth talking about..and lets face it thats one of the main attractions of going with an Iphone.

[Gubbi]

Originally Posted by french toast

So with that being said, its nice to see some of that massive wad of cash come through with something that blows the competition out of the water and actually captures the imagination of the press/public...as evidenced with the MWC gadget of the show award.

More than half of their R&D efforts were toward Symbian and MeeGo, which Elop made sure was for nothing.

I've said all along, that aligning software development with Microsoft was sound long term, but holy crap did Elop b0rk the transition up.

Cheers