The camera on the Nokia E90 is a 3.2
megapixel unit with autofocus and a flash. Picture quality
is pretty good although there is no dedicated macro
function for close-up pictures. The autofocus can be
a bit hit-and-miss, but that's common with all autofocus
systems.
The position of the camera button lends
the phone to be held with the left hand
while taking phones, and this is very close to the lens.
This means that it is very easy to cover or partially
cover the lens with a finger.
The flash is quite bright, but not as
good as the flash on a dedicated camera. The Nokia E90
seems to combine this with a low-level light mode to
compensate, and this makes the pictures somewhat grainy.
The camera does not record GPS information
with the pictures, which seems to be a missed opportunity.
Click the photos for the full-size version.
Two photographs
of the same subject show variable results.
In the first one, the focus is off and the
overall picture quality is poor.
This picture is much sharper, and yet
it is the same subject from a different
angle. We know more about phones than plants
- but we think this is a buddleia.
A picture of some thistles in a scene
that mixes highlights and shadows. The E90
copes quite well here, and all parts of
the image are clearly visible.
This picture illustrates the peril of
digital zoom. Optical zoom in cameras is
still a very rare feature, and you can see
the jaggies that the digital zoom has introduced.
Here the autofocus has missed the point
and has focussed on the background rather
than the foreground. Note the poor colour
gradiant on the foreground flower.
But in contrast, the E90 has taken an
excellent close-up picture of these cherry
tomatoes, with plenty of fine detail and
good quality colours.
The Swan pub, Elstow. Overall quality
is fair, although the bright sunlight has
caused a problem in the top right hand corner
and it looks like a finger is in the way
of the lens.
Elstow High Street is very out of focus
in this shot. It's hard to say what the
Nokia E90 was actually trying to focus on,
but it wasn't what you'd expect.
The E90 shows how variable it can be,
with this good quality picture of the Moot
Hall museum, also in the village of Elstow
in the UK.
A pretty good picture, this time Elstow
Abbey Church, where John Bunyan (author
of The Pilgrim's Progress) used to
ring the church bells.
A completely different shot, this time
in very low lighting conditions using the
E90's flash. Although the picture is quite
bright, the overall quality is somewhat
grainy.
Same interior shot with a flash, and
the graininess remains. Compare the quality
of these two photos with the exterior daytime
shots to see the difference in quality.
Video capture resolution is up to 640x480
pixels @ 25fps (which is higher than most current
phones). There's no video output on the E90, so you'll
need to transfer the file off the phone to play it back
on a larger screen. Video capture uses a standard MPEG-4
format. We did not need to download a codec to view
the videos.
The full-size videos are rather large,
although the capture size can be adjusted in the camera.
You can see a full-size picture of a video clip captured
on the Nokia E90 below - QuckTime is being used to play
back the E90's MP4 capture.
The Nokia E90 also has built-in digital
image stabilisation which can make a significant different
to the picture.
This first shot is taken without image
stabilisation (note that the clip dimensions have been
scaled down by YouTube).
And now with image stabilisation on,
you can see that the movement is smoother. You'll also
note that the quality of the E90's video capture makes
quite high-quality YouTube clips.
In the next part of our review, we will
look at the Nokia E90's operating system and applications,
and will be comparing them the the old nokia 9500 and
the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.