Market leaders Nokia are usually among the key news makers at the
Mobile World Congress. By using a clever marketing move to postpone the
announcement of their 8 megapixel flagship Nokia N86 8MP for the second
day of the MWC 2009, they really got all the attention to themselves.
And we gotta admit Nokia, you really had us there for half a day,
fooling us into believing that you won't be revealing an all-in-one
flagship as an answer to the pressure of other manufacturers such as
Samsung and LG.
Nokia N86 8MP
The Nokia N86 8MP leaked yesterday with its full specs available, however it was only today that we could lay our hands on it.
The goodies on board the Nokia N86 8MP include 8GB of internal
memory, a microSDHC card slot, a 2.6-inch OLED screen, FM transmitter,
Wi-Fi and GPS connectivity, a 3.5mm audio jack and TV out. There's also
quad-band GSM and tri-band HSDPA support for a truly worldwide voice
and data roaming.
Nokia N86 8MP
Photography-wise, the N86 8MP promises unmatched performance that's
closing the gap between cameraphones and point-and-shoots. It's the
first and only cameraphone to offer variable aperture values and a 28mm
wide angle lens.
You can see the difference the wide angle lens makes when compared
to a regular cameraphone lens. Here are two samples shot simultaneously
from one and the same position with Nokia N86 8MP and another Nokia
phone. The samples are downsampled to 800x600 pixels. Guess who's got
the wider lens!
Camera samples: comparing Nokia N86 8MP wide camera lens with a standard one
The first benefit of the variable aperture (going through
F2.4/F3.2/F4.8) is that at F2.4 the camera has more light to work with
as compared to the standard F2.8 value of all cameraphones we've seen.
The second benefit is that when there's enough light and the aperture
closes a bit (F3.2/F4.8) the resulting images are usually sharper.
Nokia N86 8MP viewfinder and camera lens
Here are several full-res camera shots taken with the Nokia N86 8MP
at the Nokia booth. If you go through the images EXIF data however you
would see that it says Nokia N85 instead of N86, and the aperture value
is F2.8, which doesn't really match what Nokia advertized. We guess the
N86 units we saw are too early to really show their potential. Some of
those were labeled as Nokia N85 8MP straight on the front panel - so
it's understandable.
Nokia N86 8MP camera samples
The dual slider design has been a traditional Nokia thing ever since
the original Nokia N95. It's a really cool solution and with the Nokia
N86 8MP the keys have excellent ergonomics.
The dual-slider form factor of the Nokia N86 8MP offers great music/gallery/gaming shortcut keys
We actually loved the Nokia N96 kickstand, and you can bet that we dig the N86 one as well. By the way, the Sony Ericsson W995 also has a clever kickstand solution that's worth a look as well.
Nokia N86 8MP has got a really cool kickstand
The Nokia N86 8MP runs on the Feature Pack 2 of the S60 Symbian user
interface. It's nothing new actually, but what you may notice about all
new Nokia smartphones announced this week is that they have some newly
customized interface graphics and it's all about transition effects.
Every Nokia smartphone comes with different set of transition effects
and they all look lovely.
It's all about Ovi as well - Ovi integration can be spotted
throughout the whole user interface, and there is even an Active
Standby plug-in now that shows how many of your your Ovi Chat contacts
are online.
Nokia N86 8MP in white
The Nokia N86 8MP is one really nice smartphone with rich equipment.
Perhaps the only disappointment is the screen size - we couldn't help
but sigh over Nokia N95 8GB 2.8-inch screen. Camera-wise N86 8MP seems
to shorten the distance to point-and-shoot digicams quite successfully.
It's camera performance is yet to stand trial by fire but the specs
look just impressive.
The only thing that seems to be missing from the Nokia portfolio now
is an 8 megapixel cameraphone with full touch UI - something along the
lines of Samsung Omnia HD.
BARCELONA, Spain
- The new Nokia N86 8MP has just been officially unveiled. This
landmark Nseries is the first Nokia phone to break the 8 megapixel
camera mark. But the N86 8MP is by no means playing simple megapixel
war games - this serious point ‘n’ shoot camera phone launches laden
with top performance photography credentials such as a Carl Zeiss
Tessar optics and a host of smart photo sharing talents.
Read on for full details of the new Nokia N86 8MP, and get clicking
through our close-up photo gallery of Nokia’s first 8 megapixel camera.
Alongside its talent for capturing ultra high-resolution shots at up to
8 megapixels, the Nokia N86 8MP comes loaded with 8GB of internal flash
memory, enabling it to stomach around 4,000 snaps. Built with Carl
Zeiss Tessar optics at its core, the N86 8MP features a lens that’s in
the same league as the sort of wide angle 35mm lens you’d find on an
SLR camera. Likewise, the lens has been engineered to offer sharper
image contrast and better colour representation.
The Nokia N86 8MP features a super vibrant OLED QVGA screen that
measures in at 2.6-inches, making it an ideal window for showcasing
your shots. However, this 8 megapixel S60-powered Nseries is more
keenly focussed on enabling you to share you photos further afield via
services such as Share on Ovi and Flickr. Plus, it comes with onboard
Assisted GPS, geared towards letting you geo-tag your photographs with
location info before you share them. Its GPS talents are also exploited for satnav action and location-based services such as Nokia Maps 3.0 which comes pre-installed on the device.
N-Gage
ready, the N86 8MP doubles as a full-blown entertainment handset. As
well as being a premium pocket games machine, it’s a music player with
a standard 3.5mm headphone socket and FM transmitter for sending songs
wirelessly to your in-car stereo. It’s OLED screen is also perfectly
suited for video playback (up to 7 hours), and like the N96 has a handy
kickstand.
Click through our gallery of photos of the Nokia N86 8MP, to get a
close-up look at Nokia’s first 8 megapixel handset. And let us know
what you think about it in the comments section further down.
