MOBILE-STUFFED: Apple iPhone vs. Nokia N93, image quality!

Apple iPhone vs. Nokia N93, image quality!

Posted by obaid On 9:31 AM

15 April 2008

Photo shout-out
Apple iPhone vs. Nokia N93, image quality!

Well, if you have been here for long enough then you should be well aware of my opinion about the iPhone and thefore I will not open the same discusssion again, it is not even the main thematic of this article.

If you are going to use it as an internet tablet, you will certainly not be sorry, mainly due to the UI and a great highresolution screen.

Nevertheless, since the phone fails completly it is actually a shame to compare it with a powerful metamorphosing and mutlifuntional smartphone like the Nokia N93, even though it is more than two years old.

Don't get me wrong, I have a MAC in the office and I am definitely not ardently anti-Apple and I am not trying to defend Nokia, but there is no doubt that in terms of featuers the iPhone turely fails. It brings nothing new to the market, except the multi-touch-screen of course.

Actually; if it brings anything new, it is the look, and honestly, slim and sleek design has been seen before, and it will be seen again. The iPhone is nothing but the fancy piece of hardware with a nice screen and an extremely good marketing. In short, it does the things that it was meant to do very well but that is basically it! It is just my opinion of course and I do accept that some of you will disagree with me.

Anyway, let's go back to the main theme of this article, photgraphy. As usual, our Mighty Mazor has compared the camera and photography capatibilites of these two phones. Let us now forget all about Apple and Nokia and just look at the phones from a purely practical viewpoint, the one of a photography enthusiast.

Apple iPhone shot with no post processing	Nokia N93 shot with post process gaussian blur

*click to enlarge

One immediately can see the extra 1MP or so advantage from the N93. More detail is resolved in some areas, as well as a generally noisier sensor. This noise though, can be thought as grain that can be found in film cameras.

The iPhone though is not without merit. The colors from the iPhone seem more saturated, and do not have the same noise found in the N93. Also on parts of the image, more detail is actually resolved from the iPhone which is strange. This could be due to the wider angle achieved by the N93. It is common knowledge that wide angle lens distort more at the edges, and also have less detail. Also the N93 having an optical lens is possible reason.

Ok here is a sample shot comparing the iPhone against the Nokia N93 in very low light

Apple iPhone shot with no post processing	Nokia N93 shot with post process gaussian blur

*click to enlarge

We can see both Images suffer from noise from low light. iPhone has changed the colours substantially from the original and everything seems brighter and more dreamy. N93 has captured the colours faithfully as they were in the actual scene. I was uprised that the iPhone had so much noise, considering it is only 2MP and on a fixed brighter lens.

Lets see a close up

*click to enlarge

To make this comparison the N93 shot had to be scaled down from 3MP to 2MP to compare against the iPhone. It is here the difference becomes substantially different. The Carl Zeiss auto focus lens is really shining here. The lens barrel is sharp and crisp. The iPhone, having no auto focus, reveals a not quite so sharp image.

The N93 also seems to have good focus depth, and the background lens cover is blurred nicely to show it is not the subject of focus. The iPhone displays both the foreground lens and the lens cap in the background in similar non sharpness.

I think it is obvious here; iPhone has a long way to go to match up with a very over 2 year old symbian Nokia phone. It amazes me that iPhone is exhibiting more noise than the Nokia N93. Color wise in low light is appalling for the iPhone and just acceptable on the N93. The lack of sharpness for medium close up shots from the iPhone limits the iPhone for any kind of serious portrait shots, and really can only be used for casual fun shots.

Ok, I was out and about, and got a bit hungry. So I ordered some yummy dessert. Look quite nice, so I took a picture with the N93, but not to neglect the iPhone, I used that too. Results speak for themselves.