The Subjective Nature of Image Quality on Camera Phones

As the performance and specification of camera phones improves I’m finding it increasingly difficult to judge image quality. Ultimately its in the eye of the beholder which is just so subjective.

As highlighted in an earlier post, more pixels do not automatically mean better quality. In some cases devices with less pixels can take better pictures if other variables such as the image processing software, lens and imaging sensor are superior.

People who know me well are aware that I take a huge quantity of pictures on camera phones. I’m in the fortunate position of being able to try lots of different devices which has meant I have been able to quickly assess which camera phones I think perform best. The problem is that these days it is getting harder.

The technology has come a long way since I first took pictures on a mobile phone in 2002 using the Sony Ericsson T68i with a clip-on VGA camera. At the time the camera was little more than a gimmick and the picture quality was poor.

However, there has been rapid progress as we’ve moved from cameras in phones as a gimmick, to cameras that were good enough to create wallpaper or send a picture message to camera phones that are sufficient for day-to-day “snapshots”, blogging and 6 x 4 printing.

Now camera phones are competing head-on with entry level digital still cameras (DSCs). The advent of eight megapixel devices such as the Samsung i8510 (Innov8) and Sony Ericsson C905 underlines this. These products are even designed to look like digital cameras.

The problem is that as the technology matures, comparing image quality becomes almost impossible.

Based on my own personal tests I believe the Nokia N82 is one of the best performers of the current crop of camera phones. I’ve found a number of other people in the industry concurring with this view.

Furthermore, with Motorola claiming market leading image quality on the ZN5 (which it developed with Kodak) and Nokia unlikely to have an eight megapixel camera till 2009, quality comparisons are going to become even more important.

I’ve recently been lucky enough to get my hands on Samsung’s eight megapixel camera phone – the i8510 (Innov8).

If experiences from the digital camera market are repeated, most consumers will probably jump on the megapixel bandwagon. They will automatically assume that eight megapixels will be better than five. On this basis I thought it was important to find out whether this really was the case.

The test I devised was to carry the N82 and Innov8 around with me for a few days and simply take comparison shots. You can see some of the results below (you can click on them for the high resolution versions).

I’ll leave it up to you to decide which camera phone you believe delivers the best pictures (please do post a comment). Early feedback seems to suggest that most people prefer the Samsung images taken in well lit conditions. The problem is that I’m not sure the Samsung images most accurately represent what the scene actually looked like. That said, people seem to like the Samsung pictures because of the vibrant “postcard-like” colours which is probably down to the image processing. In poor light the Samsung does not seem to perform as well.

My expectation is that it won’t be long before we start comparing camera phones with “real” cameras. At this point mobile phone manufacturers will find their devices being assessed on additional factors such as shutter lag and white balance.

In the meantime the bottom line is that whatever you think, it is a subjective judgement based on personal preferences and its just going to get harder and harder to draw conclusions.

Here are the comparison shots – let us know what you think…

 

 

Nokia N82	Samsung i8510 (Innov8)