GSM Cameraphone Comparison Q4 2008

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past few years you have probably noticed that the camera has become one of the key selling points of feature phones. More and more customers are focusing asking “How many megapixels“ before they inquire about anything else. However, as we found out in our cameraphone article, the resolution does not necessarily determine the quality of the pictures, only their size. In a crowded market place of 8 megapixel shooters things can get complicated because, at least in theory, the results should not be much different. Nevertheless, specs are nothing but numbers on a piece of paper and a camera’s true quality is only shown in results. With another big name entry into the 8 megapixel market, the Sony Ericsson C905, and since the results of our last showdown were less than impressive, we’ve decided to broaden our scope and add the winner of our 5-megapixel comparison, the Nokia N82 as well as a point-and-shoot camera.

Here you will see:

• Samsung Pixon
• Samsung INNOV8
• LG Renoir
• Sony Ericsson C905*
• Nokia N82
• and Canon SD870 IS – an 8-megapixel pocket camera with no phone capabilities.

*The tested C905 is a press sample provided by Sony Ericsson. If we get a newer version with better performance, we'll update our comparison.

We will test and see how the phones perform in various environments: bright daylight, when the flash is needed, capturing illuminated objects at night and close-ups (macro). In each category, besides the original photos (without any image processing) we will show you a 100% crop as well, which will make it easier to compare the quality of the images from the different cameraphones. This will also allow for a more comprehensive inspection of the detail level and the color reproduction as well.

Proceed to the next page for the first test