Although it's somewhat galling to read of imaging advancements in the smartphone world that aren't being made by Nokia engineers huddled in a chilly Finland, it's worth putting into context where smartphone imaging seems to be settling and where this fits into the existing spectrum of phone cameras, with specific reference to classic Nokias of the past. You see, powered by ever faster chipsets, 'computational photography' is indeed where imaging has ended up and, on the whole, for the benefit of all.

The term 'computational photography' itself really came in with Nokia's 808 PureView, the idea being to take a huge sensor of tiny pixels and then combine their output into 'oversampled' average values for each lower resolution (5MP) 'super-pixel'. Here, the computation itself happened in a dedicated processing chip, since the main smartphone processor was nowhere near powerful enough on its own. The system worked rather wonderfully, with the various downsides being:

• the large sensor (1/1.2" in the 808's case) required a certain vertical depth for all the optics too, making the 808 'courageously' thick(!)
• the 2011 sensor was relatively old, i.e. there was no Back Side Illumination and no optical stabilisation, two tech essentials from camera phones that were to follow.
• the 808 ran Symbian, a fine OS for the 'noughties' but which was showing its age (and that of its ecosystem) by 2012, when the 808 finally went on sale.

You couldn't fault the purity and quality of the 808's images, but the three caveats above meant that further progress needed to be made. The Lumia 1020, a year later, solved the three caveats, with:

• a slightly smaller (1/1.5" sensor), making the camera vertical depth manageable.
• BSI and OIS both onboard for handheld low light shots par excellence...
• it ran the fairly new (and Internet age) Windows Phone 8.1.

Nothing's perfect though, and the 2012 Lumia 1020 had its own caveat, namely that the oversampling down from the higher resolution sensor had to be done in the main processor, since there was no companion dedicated image processor (the 808's had been 'in development for five years' and could only be used with that particular phone), with the result that it took a full four seconds to oversample and save a JPG photo. And this was in the 'foreground', meaning that the user had to sit around and wait. Plus Windows Phone 8.1 itself was starting to look a little long in the tooth (with large tiles, a design for lower resolution screens, and so on), not to mention a fairly lowly market share which mean that third party applications weren't always plentiful.

But the idea of PureView 'computational photography' was good, that of using digital means to make more of physical light received. One approach would be to take the 1020's PureView sensor and system and throw much faster chipsets at it - this was something I'd dearly like to have seen - imagine a 1080p-screened, Snapdragon 820-powered Lumia 1020 successor!

However, Nokia (and then Microsoft, taking on the existing in-production designs when it bought Nokia up) went a different way, with the Lumia 930, 1520 and then 950 and 950 XL all going for 'only' 20MP and a much reduced PureView oversampling ratio, down to 8MP for its output. The main benefit was speed, of course, with not only shot to shot times of less than a second but also the possibility of genuine multi-shot HDR (bracketing, something which we'd been seeing on the iPhone 4S first in the phone world), though with the digital processing (combining exposures) pushed into the background while the user got on with something else on the phone.

Results were good though, on the whole, up with the Lumia 1020 (and 808 before it) as you'll see from my chart below, looking at different ways of achieving ultimate image quality from a phone-sized camera:

The intriguing part of the chart is up at the top, where we have image quality that's supposed to be as good as that from the likes of the Nokia 808 and Lumia 950 (etc., watch this space for my feature comparisons!) but with more mundane specifications - the Google Pixel has a 'standard' sized 13MP sensor (1/2.3", apparently, so in the same ballpark as the Galaxy S7 and Lumia 950), no optical stabilisation and a relatively modest aperture at f/2.0. Yet at the launch presentation, this phone camera was rated higher than anything previously by DxOMark. Putting aside my own reservations of the DxOMark tests, it does seem as though the application of raw computing power (in typical Google fashion) to taking photos is yielding good results. 

You see, rather than taking one huge shot and then (PureView) downsampling to reduce noise and improve purity (as on the 808/1020), computing power in a smartphone has now got so prodigious (in the Pixel's case, a Snapdragon 821 chipset with 4GB RAM) that it's possible to take several RAW photos (as needed) rather than one every time you press the shutter control, and do all manner of clever things to these huge 20MB un-encoded image files - auto-aligning, reducing noise, enhancing colours, white balancing, and more - spitting out and saving a 'purer' JPG-encoded image, all within one second (and in the background, so things are instantaneous for the user and the UI).

Obviously, I need to test all this and a Pixel XL is about to arrive at 'All About Towers', but the whole concept is enticing. Rather than throwing optical hardware at imaging, Google is throwing processing power at the same problem and in the process doing away with the need for OIS (though I still hold a candle for Xenon flash!)

I contend that you can think of Pixel-style 'computational photography' as the 2016 form of PureView. The idea's similar - using information from many sources to reduce random digital noise and improve dynamic range. Except that the sources in this case are from multiple frames (we don't know how many Google's proprietary HDR+ software demands, it probably varies according to conditions) rather than scattered parts of one shot from a higher resolution sensor. But the image data's real and it's RAW and is eminently suited for working with, away from the world of JPG compression artefacts.

Whichever end of my curve/chart a smartphone camera works in, the end result should be similar in terms of image quality, i.e. what the user gets to see. Google calls the system in the Pixel range 'HDR+', but if Nokia had arrived at this point, in a parallel universe, it could equally well have been named 'PureView II'. 

PS. There are benefits to being at the computing end of the curve rather than at the physics/specs end, as Microsoft managed to exploit in a limited fashion with its clever 'Dynamic exposure' mode, used in low light with moving objects on the Lumia 950, blending multiple exposures to try and keep the moving subject crisp. Something of the Pixel's power should be able to go further - it remains to be seen if Google's software engineers are as clever as the ex-Nokia team at Microsoft (were, many of them having moved on now), but at the launch event the idea of micro-bursts of photos capturing action was mooted, with the software identifying the 'perfect' moment for the final JPG. I'll be testing this too, in due course, don't worry.

PPS. The article begs the question of how far HP can push the camera in the Elite X3 - this has so far produced very average photos, but with a Snapdragon 820 and 4GB of RAM there's no reason why similar processing couldn't help the X3 produce better, clearer images. Maybe not to the level of the Pixel here, but up closer to the current gold standard, that 808/1020/950 trio.

Having set up expectations that Google's HDR+ computational photography in the new Pixel flagship can be considered 'PureView take II', or thereabouts, I thought it time to put this to the test. So I took three PureView flagships from various eras: Nokia 808, Lumia 1020 and Lumia 950 XL, and pitched them against the new Google Pixel XL. The aim, away from trivial sunny shots (hey, suits me, this is the UK in October!), is to really stretch the pixel combination systems, in reducing noise and finding detail and colour.

Of course, the Nokia 808 PureView (running in 8MP 'Creative' oversampling mode) and Lumia 1020 (running Windows Phone 8.1 and in its default 5MP oversampling mode) are here only for interest sake and for reference, since they're both obsolete in terms of anyone buying them. The Lumia 950 XL here is in its default 8MP PureView oversampling mode, matching the Google Pixel's 8.3MP HDR+ mode. In each case, all photos were snapped at 16:9 aspect ratio, in case you were wondering about some of those resolutions, though that's not that relevant since I'm mainly going to be looking at central detail.

There are also minor differences in terms of how wide angle the optics are in each case, so the 1:1 crops below won't match exactly in terms of framing.

Again, in contrast to other camera phone tests around the web, I'm deliberately trying to make things hard for the phone cameras and I am looking in detail and being picky. Let's see how the phone imaging hardware performs...

Test 1: Landscape, daylight, heavily overcast

My standard suburban landscape scene, with plenty of detail of all kinds. Not a glimmer of sun, thanks to the time of year! Here's the overall scene, as shot by the Nokia 808 (which has the most neutral colours):

Now for some central crops from, in turn, the Nokia 808, Lumia 1020, Lumia 950 XL and Google Pixel XL. Click the device names to grab the individual JPGs, in case you wanted to download and compare them yourself:

There are few surprises above - the original PureView pair do best in terms of a natural, real life look, and don't knock the 1020 for detail, since it doesn't have a 8MP mode and so it's forced to work at 5MP (I guess I could have applied a little PureView zoom but that's hard to judge on the fly). The Lumia 950 and Google Pixel both show signs of sharpening and processing, but then the effect is 'crisper' to most human eyes so you can see why manufacturers do this.

Nokia 808:  9pts; Lumia 1020: 10pts; Lumia 950: 9 pts; Google Pixel: 8pts

Test 2: Landscape (lake), daylight, overcast

Another landscape scene, somewhat prettier, with plenty of detail of all kinds. Here's the overall scene, as shot by the Nokia 808 (which again has the most neutral colours):

Now for some central crops from, in turn, the Nokia 808, Lumia 1020, Lumia 950 XL and Google Pixel XL. Click the device names to grab the individual JPGs, in case you wanted to download and compare them yourself:

Again the original PureView pair do best in terms of a natural, real life look, while the Lumia 950 and Google Pixel both show signs of sharpening and heavy processing, to the detriment of the photo in this case - the Pixel shot in particular has ugly detail when you look up close, as here.

Nokia 808:  10pts; Lumia 1020: 10pts; Lumia 950: 8pts; Google Pixel: 7pts

Test 3: Landscape (lake), overcast, zoomed in

The same lake scene as above, but this time using the native zoom functions on each phone. Here's the overall zoomed scene, as shot by the Nokia 808:

Now for some central crops from, in turn, the Nokia 808, Lumia 1020, Lumia 950 XL and Google Pixel XL. Note that because the latter two have no exact scale in their UI it was hard to judge how far in I'd zoomed, so the framing doesn't match exactly. You'll get an idea of zoom quality though.

Click the device names to grab the individual JPGs, in case you wanted to download and compare them yourself:

Yet again the original PureView pair excel, thanks to the underlying high resolution sensors and the magic of PureView zoom, a.k.a. smart cropping. The Lumia 950 makes as big a mess of digital zoom as always, I just don't understand why Microsoft can't sort this out - when Juha was there he kept saying that it wasn't a priority. I think work should be done at improving the interpolative zoom, every other smartphone does better. The Pixel XL here does well considering that it only has an 8MP sensor, effectively at 16:9, but the 808 and (especially) the 1020 are miles ahead. As you'd expect.

Nokia 808:  9pts; Lumia 1020: 10pts; Lumia 950: 5pts; Google Pixel: 7pts

Test 4: Low light atmosphere/greenery

A nice secluded path junction later in the afternoon on an overcast day. Plenty of atmosphere, I was particularly interested in the handling of really delicate detail, afforded here by the leafy branch that I was focussing on, top-centre. Here's the scene, as shot by the Nokia 808:

Now for some central crops from, in turn, the Nokia 808, Lumia 1020, Lumia 950 XL and Google Pixel XL. Click the device names to grab the individual JPGs, in case you wanted to download and compare them yourself:

As you might expect, the straight up, 'purer' oversampling in the Nokia 808 and Lumia 1020 produce stunningly realistic and natural results, while the Lumia 950 shot shows signs that the processing is breaking down under the weight of all the natural detail. The Pixel's processing goes further and there's a very artificial feel to the detail down at 1:1 here. Admittedly I'm pushing phone photography to the extremes here and expecting an awful lot ("Hey, I only wanted a snap for Facebook" might be a reasonable user response!), but the extra clarity and purity is there in the phones with bigger sensors and more capable optics if you care about such things. As I do.

Nokia 808:  10pts; Lumia 1020: 10pts; Lumia 950: 8pts; Google Pixel: 7pts

Test 5: Dusk

A suburban road at dusk, with light levels very low to my eyes. Here's the scene, as shot by the Nokia 808 (which has the most neutral colours) and which even so made the scene lighter than it really was:

Now for some central crops from, in turn, the Nokia 808, Lumia 1020, Lumia 950 XL and Google Pixel XL. Click the device names to grab the individual JPGs, in case you wanted to download and compare them yourself:

Here the playing field starts to level out a bit. The Nokia 808 lacks OIS and is single shot, so it's a little at sea with an exposure time of around 1/7s. Even my rock steady hands produced blur in the photo once you look closely enough. The Lumia 1020's shot is almost perfect in terms of colour and stability - and, again, I could have zoomed in a little if I wanted to even out the central detail a bit more. The 950 does better here, with its larger aperture and next-gen OIS, an almost perfect low light shot, while the Google Pixel XL does well for a phone camera without OIS, using multiple shots and combining and auto-aligning, but you can see both noise and processing artefacts in the final result.

Nokia 808:  5pts; Lumia 1020: 9pts; Lumia 950: 9pts; Google Pixel: 7pts

Test 6: Candle: delicate indoor lighting

A candle and dim table lamp in the bedroom. The candle was flickering, light levels were low, etc. Here's the scene, as shot by the Nokia 808:

Now for some central crops from, in turn, the Nokia 808, Lumia 1020, Lumia 950 XL and Google Pixel XL. Click the device names to grab the individual JPGs, in case you wanted to download and compare them yourself:

Ah, the king stumbles at last. The mighty Lumia 1020 makes a bit of a mess of the focussing - I tapped in each case on the candle in the viewfinder and the phone claimed it had focus lock, but it's clearly not right. Maybe the flickering flame put it off? Meanwhile the Nokia 808, despite not having OIS, produces a crisp and perfect shot, the Pixel gets very close, with minimal noise, impressively, HDR+ at its best, and the Lumia would win out except that it's introduced a slight red tint to the candle body - maybe that's the way the flame was leaning? I'm awarding a three way tie, anyway!

Nokia 808: 9pts; Lumia 1020: 5pts; Lumia 950: 9pts; Google Pixel: 9pts

Test 7: Low light, humans

My famous party/family indoor shot, lit by living room lighting and the phone camera's flash only. I'm deliberately moving too, to make it realistic. Here's the scene, as shot by the Nokia 808:

Now for some central crops from, in turn, the Nokia 808, Lumia 1020, Lumia 950 XL and Google Pixel XL. Click the device names to grab the individual JPGs, in case you wanted to download and compare them yourself:

The Nokia 808, with the brightest flash and biggest sensor, nails the shot, as you'd expect, with the Lumia 1020 not far behind, albeit with the usual yellowish cast to proceedings. Whatever others say in the tech press, indoors with moving subjects IS Xenon territory, which is why real cameras always have Xenon flash. The Lumia 950 uses its triple LED flash and processing tricks to try and pull a usable photo together, but it's too blurred if I'm honest. What's perhaps surprising is that the Google Pixel gets a much crisper shot than the 950, thanks mainly to using a much quicker shutter time (1/117s) - perhaps the HDR+ software detected the movement and deliberately went for just the one quick frame rather than multiple shots or a longer exposure? Anyway, surprisingly good for the Pixel - the lighting is actually pretty accurate to ambient conditions (i.e. the LED flash didn't make much difference) but you could always brighten the image up later, with good results.

Nokia 808: 10pts; Lumia 1020: 9pts; Lumia 950: 5pts; Google Pixel: 8pts

Test 8: Low light macro

By popular request, a macro test, also in low light, deliberately, to try and stretch the phone cameras. Here's the scene, of a small photo frame exhibit of a pop band in my daughter's room, as shot by the Nokia 808 (again making the room light level looking a lot brighter than things were in reality):

Amazingly, even the Lumia 1020 and 808 managed to focus, even though the distance to the frame was only around 7 inches. (Usually any macros need shooting from a little further away but with some PureView zoom.)

Now for some central crops from, in turn, the Nokia 808, Lumia 1020, Lumia 950 XL and Google Pixel XL. Click the device names to grab the individual JPGs, in case you wanted to download and compare them yourself:

The Nokia 808's lack of OIS shows here, with blurred details thanks to handshake, plus a little extra noise because the exposure couldn't be longer. The Lumia 1020 nails the detail and focus, but I have to dock it a point because of the usual slight yellow cast. The Lumia 950 does better and I don't think this shot could be snapped better. The Pixel's HDR+ does its best to reduce noise and auto-align multiple exposures, but as you can see the result is noisier and more processed than from the Lumia 950.

Nokia 808: 6pts; Lumia 1020: 9pts; Lumia 950: 10pts; Google Pixel: 6pts

Verdict

As ever, adding up the points gives us an idea of a 'winner' - though your own eyes will be the ultimate judge, of course:

1. Nokia Lumia 1020: 72pts
2. Nokia 808: 68pts
3. Lumia 950: 63pts
4. Google Pixel: 59pts

Now, I've already shown in several articles here on AAWP and AAS that the Lumia 950 is normally right up there with the 808 and 1020 overall - when factoring in more 'normal' photos, sunny conditions, objects, and so on. But under the trickier conditions and expectations here, my old adage 'physics wins' is proved true again. If I was heading out to snap anything under any lighting then the Luima 1020 would still be my camera phone of choice. Or the 808, but then the apps aren't there to upload the results anymore, so....(!)

Really interesting is how the brand new Google Pixel stacked up. I'd already expected that it would do pretty well, thanks to some very fast image processing from multiple shots, and here it matched the Lumia 950 score for score throughout my challenging test. So hats off to Google for coming out of the gate (in the consumer world, anyway) with a camera phone that'll do as well as the current 2016 smartphone champions in terms of imaging. That none of the 2015 or 2016 crop can really get close to the classic Nokia PureView pair (from 2012 and 2013) when shooting in tricky conditions is somewhat tragic, considering how the 808 and 1020 were both abandoned in terms of support and development after their initial release.

Oh well. Comments welcome!

In AAWP Insight #201, hosted by Steve and Rafe, we continue the Steve Litchfield 'origins' story (following Rafe's own Origins tale on the 361 Degrees podcast). This time we (mainly) cover the post-millennium years. This includes the All About era, Steve's database efforts (from Trivopaedia to a UK Pocket Directory), early device reviews and content, and the switch from Symbian to Windows Phone.

This podcast was recorded on December 12th 2016 with Steve Litchfield and Rafe Blandford.

• The All About years
• Steve Litchfield and 3-Lib (part 2)
• ...and much much more.

Links:

• http://stevelitchfield.com/
• http://twitter.com/stevelitchfield/
• http://youtube.com/stevelitchfield/

Mentions:

• David Wood: Smartphone and Beyond

You can see more of our podcasts in the Media section of the site.

I've periodically returned to the classic Nokia 808 PureView and Lumia 1020, highlighting the lossless 2.5x zoom and 'proper' Xenon flash, though there's been precious little to compare these with that's camera centric from the wider smartphone world in the last five years. Yet along comes something new, the Hasselblad camera mod on the Moto Z, a late 2016 Android smartphone. Along with the 808, 1020 and also ageing Samsung Galaxy K Zoom, I couldn't resist a quick photo comparison. No, not of results (that comes soon!), this time of the hardware itself...

Why am I making a fuss over both zoom and Xenon flash? Because they dramatically enhance the range of subjects and scenarios for taking photos. After all, every standalone camera, every DSLR, all have both zoom and Xenon too - so it's puzzling that phone manufacturers have steered quite so far clear away from these technologies. I realise that there's a slight increase in bulk and power requirements, but I'd have still expected that there be a few more camera-centric smartphone offerings. Than four. Over five years. (I don't count units like the Panasonic CM-1 or the Kodak Ektra because they had neither zoom nor Xenon.)

• Why zoom? As in 'lossless' zoom, implemented on the Nokia 808 PureView (running Symbian) and Nokia Lumia 1020 (running Windows Phone 8.1), and optical zoom, implemented here on the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom and Motorola Moto Z 'Hasselblad' (snap-on) mod. Because you can get optically closer to your subject, providing more detail and more intimate framing.
    
• Why Xenon? Because shots of pets and human beings in low light can come out perfectly sharp, 'frozen' in motion. I realise that this isn't always to everyone's taste, since the flood or pure white light can also affect the atmosphere (e.g. at a party), but sometimes when you're grabbing a moment at an evening event then only Xenon will do.

Step one then - comparing the physical propositions. (Step two will be to take these camera phones out into the world and see how they perform relative to each other, and this will take a day or two.) The Hasselblad solution is by far the bulkiest, but this is natural because there's not only the bulk of a telescopic 10x zoom mechanism, there's also the added bulk from having separate phone and camera portions (the 'mod' pulls off and you can swap it for extra battery or a large stereo speaker etc.) 

Plan form factors aren't that different, apart from the oldest, the Nokia 808, with its relatively tiny 4" screen (by today's standards!), though all phones are presented here camera-side first:

Aside from the 'DSLR-like' 'grip' on the Moto Z plus Hasselblad, the phone form factors don't seem too dissimilar at first glance. However, start to introduce a plan perspective and the difference in thicknesses is immediately apparent:

And you thought the Nokia 808 was chunky back in 2012...

In fairness, the detachable nature of the Hasselblad Moto Z Mod means that you're not holding the full form factor all the time. You'd typically carry the Mod in your pocket (it comes with a case) and clip it on when the time came to take some adventurous photos. Of course, if you're going to carry something in a pocket then why not a small standalone camera in the first place? You do get the immediate sharing via the Moto Z smartphone this way round, but the solution does seem a little overkill. 

The all-in-one Galaxy K Zoom seems svelte and elegant by comparison, while the Lumia 1020 is positively the looker in this group, offering a vastly slimmer profile with almost no compromises beyond that 2.5x limit on (lossless) zoom. 

And - gulp - this is all with the cameras not activated. Boot the Camera apps up and the electronics swing into action. The Nokia 808 and Lumia 1020 mechanical shutters power up and you can see the lenses, the Hasselblad Mod and the Galaxy K Zoom power up their telescopic lens systems, etc. And, to emphasise the difference further, I've set the latter two to their 10x zoom positions:

I'll return to how effective the combination of optical zoom and OIS is (in all cases bar the Nokia 808) in the next feature, pitching results head to head across a nuber of use cases.

Shooting the hardware comparison above from a slightly different angle, the Nokia 808 and 1020 look more comparable in terms of size, but it's all in the use of perspective - in the hand, the Lumia 1020 still feels 'right' to me. In every regard, even with a grippy shall case on - this may indeed be that I'm simply so used to the 1020 after three years of use, or it may be that the bulky newcomers are just that - too bulky for mainstream use.

The Galaxy K Zoom is so close to being useable day to day, I owned one for several months when it came out in 2014, two years after the Nokia 808 (2012) and a year after the Lumia 1020 (2013). The K Zoom always felt too big, heavy and thick in the pocket and I never found a belt holster large enough to take it. Plus, in hindsight, its specifications were Nokia-esque in their shortsightedness, with far too little internal storage - the K Zoom is stuck on an Android OS version from its launch year, sadly, abandoned by Samsung.

I seem to be in the possession now of a litany of camera-centric phones which have been abandoned by their manufacturer. I'm thinking also of the Symbian-powered Samsung G810, which also featured optical zoom and Xenon flash, back in 2008, even the Nokia N93 and N82, even earlier. Manufacturers persist in toying with camera-centric phones and never putting all their weight behind them in terms of design and then marketing. The obvious conclusion is that the mass market, the bulk of sales, are to people who simply don't need (or know how to use) a high end camera in their phones. For them, a 'good' camera is good enough.

Which is a shame from my point of view and I'm sure I'll find a few sympathisers here. Anyway, I'll have a use case photo shoot out between the four contenders here very shortly. Anyone think I should also throw the Lumia 950 into the mix, as a mass market top end data point? Comments?

Yesterday I looked at the arrival, in for review, of a rather rare thing - a Xenon-flash-equipped, zoom-equipped camera phone, competing (obviously) with such (also rare) Nokia classics like the 808 PureView and Lumia 1020. But never mind the bulk (in this case, removeable, but still...), never mind the form factor, how do these ultra-camera-phones perform against each other in a variety of challenging tests? Let's find out...

As hinted in the original piece, I'm going to throw in a known data point, the current world champion of camera phones (in my opinion), the Lumia 950 XL. Not because it's good at zoom (it isn't), not because it has Xenon flash (it hasn't), but because behind all of the thoughts here about super-specialist camera phones is the reality that a traditional LED-equipped, solid state flagship smartphone is good enough for most people. I.e. what's interesting here is how far (or otherwise) the 950 XL is behind the specialists here, given the specific tests included. The 950 XL stands in here for the iPhone 7*, the Galaxy S7 and other top end consumer phones.

* and yes, the iPhone 7 Plus now has a 2x zoom lens, though this isn't OIS-enabled and there's still just LED flash. I know, I know. See here for my iPhone 7 Plus imaging comparison feature.

Things are complicated, in terms of comparisons, by the different capture resolutions here, so there will be a degree of mismatch in all the crops below:

• The Nokia 808 has an 8MP oversampled 'Creative' mode, with zoom to 1:1 on the sensor where needed.
• The Lumia 1020 is best in its 5MP oversampled mode, though as with the 808, for zooming purposes, the full resolution of the sensor is, of course, used.
• The Lumia 950 has its native 8MP oversampled mode, and again the fuller 16MP (in 16:9) resolution is used when zooming.
• The Samsung Galaxy K Zoom shoots in 16MP in 16:9, natively, and there are no useful oversampled lower resolutions, so we're stuck with this in terms of comparisons. Zooming is optical, so there's no change in resolution or sensor use here.
• The Moto Z Hasselblad shoots in 9MP in 16:9 mode, with the same note about optical zoom as above.

In addition, the 2.5x (or so) lossless zoom in the Lumia 1020 (slightly less in the 808 in its 8MP mode and less still in the 950, with its lower resolution sensor) is no match for the true, optically stabilised 10x zoom in the Galaxy K Zoom and Moto Z Hasselblad mod, so these ultra-zoom cases are sometimes included separately - see the notes below, as appropriate to each test shot or use case.

Note that I'm deliberately trying to push the boundaries in every shot below, as noted in each case, I wanted the phones to struggle - many of the photos wouldn't have worked at all on more conventional phone hardware.

Test shot 1: Sunny churchyard

The easiest shot here, I still presented a challenge by shooting into the sun and noting huge differences in light and shade across the frame, so this was a test of dynamic range. No zooming needed - yet!

Here's the overall scene:

And here are central crops from, in sequence, the Nokia 808 PureView, the Nokia Lumia 1020, the Microsoft Lumia 950 XL, the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom and the Moto Z with Hasselblad mod - in each case click the phone name to grab the original JPG for your own analysis.

As expected, with such a relatively easy shot, there's not much to choose between the photos here, though the Lumia 950 clearly has the edge in terms of dynamic range, contrast and detail (especially because it has the full resolution 16MP mode up its sleeve too). This is fitting, the 950/XL remains the phone camera to beat in the world if you exclude zooming and Xenon flash, which is where this feature comes in, of course!

Test shot 2: Sunny churchyard, clock zoom

The clock tower remains a favourite subject of mine, here lit in bright sun, so there was plenty of light available.

Here's the overall scene:

And here are central zoomed crops from, in sequence, the Nokia 808 PureView, the Nokia Lumia 1020, the Microsoft Lumia 950 XL, the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom and the Moto Z with Hasselblad mod - in each case click the phone name to grab the original JPG for your own analysis.

And immediately, as zooming is introduced, the all-conquering Lumia 950 XL falters, with garish colours and horribly block digital zoom. The Lumia 1020 just bests the 808 PureView, as it usually does when zooming, with clearer detail down at the pixel level (remember we're down at 1:1 on the sensor here in both cases), thanks to the OIS and to the BSI sensor. But even though I'm reining in the zoom on the latter two test phones by artificially setting them to around the 3x zoom mark, you can tell immediately that results are superior - when zoom is needed, you really can't beat optical.

And to make this point, let's extend both the K Zoom and Hasselblad to their full 10x optical zoom - with loads of light available, what kind of detail can be achieved?

Here are central zoomed crops from, in sequence, the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom and the Moto Z with Hasselblad mod - in each case click the phone name to grab the original JPG for your own analysis.

Quite extraordinary how good both these two camera-phone hybrids are - but the penalty is all the extra bulk, of course. So we're not strictly comparing 'apples to apples', but the contrast is fascinating anyway. Let's move on with some more zoom examples before delving into the other USP of these phones, the Xenon flash.

Test shot 3: Late afternoon sun, distant aircraft

Always a good test of zoom because you can't get closer to the aircraft when the museum is closed, here shooting through the fence.

Here's the overall scene:

And here are central crops from, in sequence, the Nokia 808 PureView, the Nokia Lumia 1020, the Microsoft Lumia 950 XL, the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom and the Moto Z with Hasselblad mod - in each case click the phone name to grab the original JPG for your own analysis.

Note that here I skipped mimicking the 2.5x (or thereabouts) zoom from the Lumia 1020 and let the latter two phones go right to 10x optical zoom:

Optical zoom impresses again, of course, as it should, with the K Zoom's slightly larger zoom optics and more mature algorithms again producing the better zoomed shot. Of the other devices, the Lumia 1020 wins out, thanks to perfect performance down at the pixel level (the 808 is more optimised for 5MP oversampled, un-zoomed use).

Test shot 4: Low light sunset, zoomed

One final zoom test, here in low light into a late sunset, restricted in this case to a maximum of 3x zoom (you'll see why). Here's the overall scene:

And here are central crops from, in sequence, the Nokia 808 PureView, the Nokia Lumia 1020, the Microsoft Lumia 950 XL, the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom and the Moto Z with Hasselblad mod - in each case click the phone name to grab the original JPG for your own analysis.

Optical zoom is brilliant in bright light, but it struggles more in low light, since the effective aperture that lets light in is much smaller. Add in the lack of PDAF (Phase Detection Auto-Focus, used in the Hasselblad) in the older K Zoom and you can see that it struggled to achieve an accurate focus. The Hasselblad mod does win this test but the Nokia 808 and Lumia 1020 aren't far behind, each without the aperture restriction of the bulky zoom mechanism.

Now onto tests involving the Xenon flash in the main four phone cameras....

Test shot 5: Shaded gravestone, fill-in flash

One of the more advanced, yet most effective uses of Xenon flash is to fill in shady detail in an otherwise bright scene. Here lighting up the face of a gravestone, around a metre and a half away and darker than the shot below makes it seem (it was taken on the 950 with triple LED flash already forced on). Here's the overall scene:

And here are central crops from, in sequence, the Nokia 808 PureView, the Nokia Lumia 1020, the Microsoft Lumia 950 XL, the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom and the Moto Z with Hasselblad mod - in each case click the phone name to grab the original JPG for your own analysis.

Very different results from the different Xenon flashes and cameera solutions, then. The Hasselblad mod has the largest and brightest Xenon flash, but the K Zoom and Nokia 808 aren't far behind. The Lumia 1020's Xenon flash is comparatively weedy under such circumstances, though it's optimised more for balance against low light scenes. So let's start testing these in the remaining two test shots.

Test shot 6: Flash reach

By popular request, I was about 3m from my summerhouse in pitch darkness - how much could the Xenon flash light up, in each case? Here's the overall scene:

As it turned out, the test became as much a test of how good the sensor/aperture was in each case, since there's not only how far the light reached but how much of it was accepted back and processed. Anyway, here are central crops from, in sequence, the Nokia 808 PureView, the Nokia Lumia 1020, the Microsoft Lumia 950 XL, the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom and the Moto Z with Hasselblad mod - in each case click the phone name to grab the original JPG for your own analysis.

Very different results again. Let's take them from the top down: the Nokia 808 has a bright flash and there's no shortage of light, even at this distance, but the lack of OIS means that the photo isn't very crisp. The Lumia 1020 produces an almost perfect photo in the cropped region, with colours as they are in daylight - very impressive. The newer 950 lacks Xenon flash, but the combination of triple LED and a much larger aperture do net it the second best crop here. Meanwhile the smaller aperture needed by the bulky zoom optics in the Galaxy K Zoom and the Hasselblad Moto mod get in the way of stellar results, with the addition of focussing problems with the former (no PDAF again). The Hasselblad's shot is really crisp but the colours are miles away from daylight reality.

Test shot 7: Party time!

Are you ready? On with my traditional Xenon test. That's right, it's (Christmas) party time! And, unlike my usual tests, I've not only opened a bottle but consumed most of it! Note that I deliberately had these tests shot handheld by a third person, i.e. not on a tripod - so a completely realistic (party) test. I'm not trying to pose, but am chatting away and generally wobbling(!) as the shots were taken.

Here's the overall scene:

And here are central crops from, in sequence, the Nokia 808 PureView, the Nokia Lumia 1020, the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom and the Moto Z with Hasselblad mod.

All four Xenon-list shots were quite acceptable, varying slightly in precision of focus and colouration. My favourite was the Hasselblad's, perhaps unsurprisingly since this has the brightest Xenon bulb here, but the other three were quite acceptable, especially when viewed in toto rather than at 1:1, as here.

My tester did shoot with the Lumia 950 too, and I'm not quite sure what went wrong - but it wasn't good enough to publish here. Still, it goes to show the typical perils of shooting moving human beings in low light without Xenon! I return to my familiar rant: there's a reason why all 'real' cameras have Xenon flash...

Test shot 8: Night time

[Update] By popular demand, I popped outside and shot the photo below in winter fog. The K Zoom and Hasselblad both boast a multi-shot 'night' mode, and it seemed fair to allow this to be used. The only phone without something to help in the gloom was the Nokia 808, of course, with no OIS to stabilise the shot - so I stood extra-steady, with feet braced, and it seemed to do the trick, with exposure ending up at 1/8s - the other phones (with OIS) opted for a real or virtual 1/5s or so.

Here's the overall scene:

Because of the nature of the scene and not even me wanting to see 1:1 crops from high resolution night shots, I cropped the middle 50% of each photo, scaled to the same 750 pixels and then cropped/sliced from there. No cheating, I'm just trying to give a sense of the output from each phone. Here are central crops from, in sequence, the Nokia 808 PureView, the Nokia Lumia 1020, the Microsoft Lumia 950 XL, the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom and the Moto Z with Hasselblad mod - in each case click the phone name to grab the original JPG for your own analysis.

Aside from the unpleasant tinge to the Hasselblad shot, there's not much to be learned from all this, other than if you stand VERY still then you can still get good night time shots even on a non-stabilised Nokia 808! The weather conditions today were appalling, given the fog and the cold there's no point in me attempting a night time zoomed shot. Yet. I'll update this post if the fog clears over the weekend!

Verdict

For anyone in the know there are few real surprises above. The otherwise award-winning Lumia 950 is quickly left behind once you start to factor in zooming and/or Xenon flash, while the older Nokia 808 does as well as it usually does but struggles with low light landscapes and with real crisp results when zoomed. The Lumia 1020 does very well all round, with just some colour cast issues under certain conditions - and, for the slender form factor (in this company), remains perhaps my pick of all the hardware here. It's certainly the best balance of display, camera and thickness.

However, the old Samsung Galaxy K Zoom always impressed as long as there's enough light to go round and it remains a spectacular piece of kit most of the time - high quality optics and zoom, a decent sensor, let down by a slightly chunky form factor and (now) a really old, un-updated version of Android. The newcomer, the Hasselblad 'mod' for the Moto Z, is the reason why this feature exists and results are generally good. Focussing is fast enough, the flash bright enough, the optics good enough - add in the removeable nature (from the phone body) when needed and this 'mod' on a current late 2016 smartphone is a tempting solution for many.

All very interesting - my heart still belongs to the Lumia 1020 though, which still stands up overall without adding complications in terms of modularity or thickness. Your comments welcome - are you tempted by this new Moto Z camera modularity?

One of the last great active Symbian developers, Marxoft is keeping on going, with streaming media applications that keep pace with API changes in Internet services. Today saw updated versions of the developer's SoundCloud client, along with associated modules and Internet Radio.

From the Marxoft web site:

MusiKloud2 for Maemo5 has now been updated to version 0.2.0, whilst the Internet Radio and Mixcloud plugins have both been updated due to a change in the MusiKloud2 plugin API, which now also supports Qt/C++ and JavaScript plugins.

Additional features in version 0.2.0 include:

• Support for playing remote URLs.
• Recursive searching for music tracks when playing local folders.
• Option to save/restore playback queue.
• Sleep timer.

The updated packages can be obtained from the Maemo5 extras-devel repository.

In addition to the Maemo5 update, MusiKloud2 is now available for the Symbian platform. Below are links to the SIS packages:

• MusiKloud2 0.2.0 (Symbian Anna/Belle)
• MusiKloud2 Internet Radio 0.0.4 (Symbian Anna/Belle)
• MusiKloud2 Mixcloud 0.0.4 (Symbian Anna/Belle)

Comments welcome if you're using any of this as to how well it works. So many other Internet services are no longer fully compatible with Symbian apps, and with certificate issues rearing their ugly heads, it has proved unworkable for me as a primary phone, but I'm sure there are some people persevering!

Proving that nothing really ever dies, a team out of Russia has been working on custom firmware for the venerable Nokia N86 - and has produced a 'Symbian World' themed OS - you know, with the cute Symbian cartoon imagery of recent (well, 2010) times... See below for details and download link.

'Bounty Hunter' says:

We finally released very stable and quite deep mod of Nokia N86 FW. Non touch Nokia phones have far too few good Custom FirmWares (CFW). So our group Symbian_Zone in Russia is still trying to use this phone to the max. :)

This CFW is very clean, all dead Nokia services are deleted, and the CFW has many important fixes like built-in SHA-2 certs for normal web browsing, officially updated library, Nokia Maps, N-Gage and others.

Also, an optional ROM Patcher used. So you can use official software and unsigned packages too. 

This is the first CFW from our Symbian_Zone: Symbian World series. Also, we finally understand how to calibrate the core in Symbian 9.2 phones, so the next CFW will be done for the Nokia N81-1/N81-3 (Nokia's N-Gage 2.0 flagship) and a few more.

There's a detailed changelog, though here machine translated from the original Russian:

Modified firmware "Symbian World" for Nokia N86 8MP (RM-484).

It is based on the original firmware v30.009.

-------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------

Features of CFW:

• All interface, input and help languages ​​are removed, except English and Russian;
• The default language is English;
• The default date is 01/01/2017;
• The default standby mode is "Standard" (In which the "idle mode" is empty);
• The default USB mode is "Drive";
• Updated time zones, for Russia there is no more time translation, but Moscow is still "GMT + 4", not "GMT + 3";
• The default time delimiter is a colon, the date separator is a dash, for all languages;
• The "Themes" icon is returned to the menu. The theme "Nokia NSeries" is replaced by "Symbian World Silver Theme";
• In the corresponding menu in "Themes" many different waiting modes are added;
• Reduced the top bar in the menu. There was more space for the icons, and the menu now looks the same as on Symbian OS 9.1 / 9.2;
• New menu structure. Added folders: "Multimedia", "Data Manager", "Internet", "Location", "Games", "Help";
• Replaced application icons "Dictionary", "Reading message", "Home Media", "FM-transmitting", "Phone settings" On the OVi style. Initially, one part of these icons was in the NSeries style, and the other, in the ESeries style: Nokia E66 / E71;
• The "Real Player" icon is now replaced with themes;
• The system has the effect of the NSeries themes, but it is not registered in the manifest, which has never worked. Corrected. Now all standard themes have this effect;
• The OVi standby mode has been replaced with a mode where there are only application shortcuts and 8 notes of the calendar, since in standard horizontal standby mode only 4 calendar notes can be accommodated. But there is a plug-in built-in E-Mail client;
• In the horizontal standby mode, by default, the mail and Internet exchange lines are disabled;
• The calendar plug-in on the desktop shows events only for the current day, and not for 7 days in advance;
• The warning about emergency calls in the standby mode when the autonomous mode is active has been removed;
• Quality of images for the camera: 100% - for all resolutions, and for video recording, the bit rate is increased from 4 MB / s to 5 MBit / s;
• The cache for firmware via FOTA is reduced to 0 bytes, as new versions of official firmware will no longer be available;
• In normal and offline modes, warning signals and key signals are disabled. In silent - vibration is included;
• 24-hour screensaver by default;
• Backlight timeout: 60 seconds, screensaver: 90 seconds, animation: 60 seconds;
• Backlight brightness is set to 25%;
• The dictaphone by default writes in the "Standard" quality: .wav with a bitrate of 128 kBit / s, the duration of a day for one record. If you select "High" quality, the recording is made in: .aac with a bitrate of 256 Kbps / s. As a side effect from the quality improvement, the recorder can not record conversations. To regain the possibility of recording telephone conversations, in the settings of the recorder it is enough to change the recording quality back to "Standard";
• To turn off the squeak when recording phone conversations, you need to activate the corresponding patch in the built-in "ROMPatcher Plus v3.1";
• Delivery reports for SMS and MMS are included;
• Saving 999 sent messages;
• Accessory by default: Headphones;
• Speaker volume: 10, and hands-free: 7;
• By default are included: display of call duration, information after a call, speed dialing;
• In the standard browser, the mini-map, security warnings are disabled and the suffix ".ru" is added. Standard bookmarks are cleared, instead of them are added: "Yandex", "YouTube", "VKontakte". Hot keys are given to the layout, which was on its previous versions;
• Built-in support for SHA-2 certificates, necessary for working with the modern Internet;
• In the Stub of the central repository, * .cre is added to normal update of this type with usual .sis / .sisx with SP and PU type;
• Full rights for J2ME;
• Reduced the call time of the Task Manager;
• Removed visualization brakes in the player. Also removed are "Go to Music store" and "Find in Music store" from the player menu;
• In the player by default, song repetition and mixing are included, the default volume is 70%;
• The player searches for music only in E: \ Sounds \ Digital and F: \ Sounds \ Digital;
• The name of the FM transmitter has been changed from "Nokia" to "N86 8MP". The default frequency is changed from 107.5 to 88.1;
• Built-in "ROMPatcher Plus v3.1" (Naturally, with a working autorun);
• Built-in program-button "Flashlight" for flash;
• Built-in "N-Gage v1.40.1557" with a fix for FP2 and association with .n-gage files in the system so that all hacked games work as expected;
• Built-in game "Snakes v0.6.0.20";
• The standard program for viewing images is replaced by a similar one from the Nokia N78. The fact is that the standard program from Nokia N86 8MP forcibly rotates the display by 90 °, and this follows the system orientation. 

You can download this firmware here on the AAS server. It's assumed that you know how to use Phoenix and the requisite flashing tools. If you don't then.... best stay away!

Wow. I'm speechless. This is 2017. Dedication, eh?

With every rating that the much-quoted DxOMark site puts out for phone cameras, the more I think that it's missing a healthy dose of real world experience and use cases. Not to mention a few key phone models (e.g. Lumia 950). Given that I've tested the majority of recent smartphones for AAS and then AAWP, usually against the best of the competition, I wanted to aggregate my experience into my own 'Top 10' camera-phones of all time. 'SteveMark', if you will.

Let's start with DxOMark's ratings though. Here's their all-time, current top (22) phone cameras:

1. HTC U11

2. Google Pixel/XL

3. HTC 10, Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy S7/Edge, Sony Xperia X Performance

7. Huawei P10, Moto Z Force Droid, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Plus, Sony Xperia XZ, Sony Xperia Z5

12. Apple iPhone 7, LG G5, Galaxy Note V, Samsung S6 Edge

16. Huawei Mate 9, LG V20

18. Apple iPhone 6s Plus, Google Nexus 6P, Moto Z Droid, Moto G Plus, Moto Droid Turbo 2

Notice any omissions? No Nokia 808, Lumia 1020, Lumia 950, not even the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom, which was ALL about the camera. In fact, you have to go way down to the 40s and 50s in their list to find any of the models just mentioned - if they're there at all (no 950, e.g.)

Which is clearly wrong and misleading. So I thought I'd right this with my own all-time list.

There are, as ever, some notes to read first:

• I'm mainly looking at image quality, though I do make some allowance for the speed of the photo-taking experience. It's a tricky balance. For example, it might take four seconds to take a photo on the Lumia 1020 (i.e. before you can take the next one), but if the resulting photo is ultimately of higher quality than that on (say) an Apple iPhone, which might have dashed off three photos (or more, in a burst) in the same time, then the 1020 gets the higher score in my book. Though what if the 1020 'missed the moment' while the iPhone grabbed it, despite ultimately slightly lower image quality? So I'm not totally disregarding speed in my list below.
   
• I go further than DxOMark by putting in more 'real world' scenarios into my testing. So moving people in low light with flash; arty night landscape shots, handheld; using digital zoom; and so on. All staples in my tests. You can't just test a phone in a studio on a tripod, or just outside in the sunshine, you know. 
   
• Unlike DxOMark, I try to test phone cameras regularly well after their launch date, so early software issues have a chance to be resolved.
   
• Unlike DxOMark, I'm not biased against Nokia or Windows Phone (and successors)! DxOMark hasn't even tested my number one pick below, 18 months after it was launched, so long that it's hard to even find it for sale now. Yet it appears nowhere in the DxOMark all time listings.
   
• I haven't included any phone camera that I haven't personally tested. And yes, I'm aware that this introduces ironies ("Steve didn't even include model X!")!

And so on to my 'SteveMark' top 10 of all time, with notes and explanation along the way. In order:

1. Lumia 950/XL

18 months on, I'm still staggered by the sheer quality of 8MP and 16MP shots taken with this phone camera. And it's quick too, since all post processing is shoved to the background while you get on with taking the next snap. The triple LED flash does a decent enough job on the whole, the OIS is top notch, and in 8MP mode there's even a little lossless zoom, which is handy. The only real Achilles heel is going beyond 'lossless' into 'lossy' zoom territory, since the old 'Lumia Camera 5' digital zoom algorithms are complete rubbish.

2. Apple iPhone 7 Plus

The iPhone 7 Plus gets in here by cheating, of course, using not one but two 12MP cameras, the second of which is a 2x telephoto job. Yes, it's a kludge, but a very well done kludge and the software makes a seamless job of zooming from one lens's view to the other's. Add in quad LED flash and some very good image processing algorithms (as you'd expect with ex-PureView, ex-Nokia expert Ari Partinen on the team) and it's hard to fault the iPhone for insanely fast photos with excellent quality, even when zoomed right in (2x plus another 2x digital, so 4x in all, very easily). See my Nokia 808/1020/950/7 Plus 'zoom' test.

3. Google Pixel/XL

I've written elsewhere on this site about the Google aHDR+ software being akin to Nokia's PureView concept in that it combines information from multiple frames (rather than from underlying pixels) to create noiseless, purer images. That this is possible is down to the sheer speed of smartphone chipsets nowadays. Take nine 12MP photos in a tenth of a second? No problem, it's taken care of by a blazingly fast processor and masses of RAM, etc. Then take another second to align/combine and optimise them and you're done. What would have taken 30 seconds five years ago is now done as fast as you can be ready to take the next photo. Amazing. Results back this up too. See my Lumia 950 vs Pixel head to head.

4. Nokia 808 PureView

Amazingly, this is from 2012, but results from the 808 still stand up well, with incredibly natural, incredibly pure 5MP output, a perfect resolution for sharing these days and with genuine 2.5x lossless zoom thanks to the huge underlying 41MP 1/1.2" sensor. True, there's no OIS for arty night time shots, but the more usual scenario in the evenings is of closer-up shots and moving people and the 808's Xenon flash, combined with a mechanical shutter, is almost impossible to beat. Then add into the mix that the shot to shot time is almost instant because all the oversampling is taken care of by a dedicated ISP and I think even iPhone owners of today would be impressed with the capture capabilities. 808 experts can also knock themselves out with complete control of sharpness, saturation, etc. - the Nokia 808 is the camera phone lover's camera phone.

5. Nokia Lumia 1020

Still holding its end up from 2013, the Lumia 1020 takes the Nokia 808 PureView's capabilities and adds in OIS for clearer zoomed photos and night landscape shots. However, the dedicated ISP was lost in the move from Symbian to Windows Phone as the phone's OS, meaning that all the vital 'pure' oversampling has to be done on the main chipset and so takes over three seconds rather than a fraction of a second, as on the 808. Plus the Xenon flash isn't as bright and 'pub' photos don't come out as well, so I have to rate the 1020 below its predecessor here. Still, pure 5MP output from the 1020 still impresses today in 2017 - when the 1020 gets it right it can compete with the best DSLRs. (And yes, when it gets it wrong, it really gets it wrong, but let's not go there....)

6. Samsung Galaxy K Zoom

This stunned everyone when it appeared in 2014, with the body of a Samsung compact camera, complete with 10x telescopic zoom lens and super-bright Xenon flash, all somehow streamlined into the body of a regular smartphone. OK, so the phone side of things was compromised by the extra girth and thickness, and ok, so the phone was also compromised in terms of general usability by having an old chipset, limited resources and a version of Android that was almost immediately abandoned. But for zoom capabilities and for indoor flash shots, the Galaxy K Zoom remains unmatched to this day. 

7. LG G5

Time for another innovation, another cheat! However, the G5's gimmick turned out to be more than a gimmick - a second, wide angle camera that enabled the snapping of scenes and large outdoor objects that wouldn't otherwise be possible - you'd be amazed how often this comes in handy. Add this to the G5's main camera having wide aperture and very decent capabilities and smooth transitions in software between the various modes and the G5 camera turns out to be something of a classic. See my G5 versus Lumia 950 feature. (Note that the new LG G6 (shown in the collage below) isn't in the same class, having compromised the depth of its cameras and thus the optics by opting to eliminate a camera 'bump' on the back.)

8. Samsung Galaxy S8

You may be surprised that I've rated the modern Samsung phone cameras this lowly, but despite their decent optics, OIS and sensors, Samsung still tries to do far too much in its processing, with over-sharpening and over-saturation at every turn. In truth, the S8 is better than the S7 range in this regard, with some multi-frame processing that lessens the need for over-zealous algorithms, but the effects remain to some degree. The S8 also remains single-camera, with no zoom innovations, no wide angle, no genuine flash, nothing of note to bring it up the ratings. You can still get cracking results with a Galaxy S8, especially when viewed on the phone screen, but don't look too closely at the pixels... See my 950 versus S8+ vs LG G6 shootout.

9. Apple iPhone 7

As mentioned above, the presence of a little ex-Nokia imaging DNA on the Apple imaging team has helped the company craft camera phones that don't over-saturate or over-sharpen images on the whole. The '7' got OIS at long last, which helps night time shots, and you have to give the iPhone props for incredibly quick camera launching and snapping, even if image quality isn't quite up with the very best in the world. See my 950 vs iPhone 7 shootout.

10. Nokia N8

Going back now to 2010, this comparatively ancient smartphone still competes in terms of imaging, thanks to a large 12MP sensor and bright and true Xenon flash, allied to ultra-natural image processing. Despite the use of the now-obsolete Symbian, many people still use the likes of the N8 and 808 PureView (above) as standalone cameras/camcorders and there can be no higher tribute than this - can you imagine using an old Galaxy S8 in 2024 just as a camera?

Comments welcome on my SteveMark Top 10 then. Evaluating cameras is always subjective, as I'm sure DxOMark would agree, and everyone has their own criteria for what makes a good phone camera. But I still think that my Top 10 is more accurate than theirs in terms of real world image taking quality under all scenarios.

You may recall that I picked my top 10 all-time best smartphone cameras a while back? Well, the idea's back and this time I've made it interactive (with a little help from Javascript wizard Indrek) - you can now put in your preferences and the top 10 will get sorted and ranked accordingly. Which phone camera (from this list, anyway) really is THE best for YOU?

To get started, head over to stevelitchfield.com/grid.htm and rate how important each of a zillion factors to you in terms of what you'd expect from a great phone-hosted camera. You can apply your own weightings, though, and the page will multiply everything up and work out rankings according to your stated criteria. Cool, eh?

I'd have hosted the grid here, but it's too 'wide' for Rafe's layout!

Comments welcome, of course. Which, in your opinion, smartphone cameras need adding to this table? I can do various additions and amendments in time!

PS. If you get my old 'smartphone features' grid on that same URL, then refresh the page in your browser. I re-used the URL because the old grid was so out of date, etc.

PPS. I wonder if any of the DxOMark people read my criticisms of their methods and results. I'd be happy to chat to them about all this, of course...

The tech media has been falling over itself in the last week to talk about the ten year anniversary of the Apple iPhone, that moment when Steve Jobs revealed the shape of smartphones to come. All singing, all dancing? It really wasn't. Revisionist history says that the iPhone introduced all the features we see in today's smartphones, but that's not accurate...

I guess I shouldn't get too worked up about people rewriting tech history - but as one of the writers behind All About Symbian (and now AAWP) I just can't help myself put the record straight. Tech journalists (mainly American) have been falling over themselves to praise the iPhone as the point where the modern smartphone was born, but they're only right in one small sense.

And even that small sense is highly debatable. Think of the iPhone of 2007 and then today's phones and there's a clear sense of continuity of a full-screen experience with capacitive touch. Yet smartphones had been all-screen for years in the Windows Mobile world, with devices like the O2 XDA launching in 2002, a full five years before the iPhone, and based on the existing Windows Mobile PDAs of the previous few years. Even though the iPhone was absolutely to be credited for bringing capacitive touch to the mainstream phone world, it wasn't the first - the LG Prada had a capacitive touchscreen six months previously.

Nokia N95 and the original iPhone, for comparison. Outstanding functions and capabilities versus outstanding ease of use?

All other functions were represented in existing smartphones. Over in the Symbian world (the dominant smartphone platform from 2000 to 2009, a full decade), the Nokia smartphones - in particular the Nseries - had pioneered the inclusion of a GPS receiver, had introduced the use of accelerometers, with the N95 being the obvious model to point to, being launched at the tail end of 2006, the year before the iPhone's release.

Then there are good cameras, with some of the Sony Ericsson 'feature phones' (culminating in the K850i from summer 2007) containing high megapixel units along with Xenon flash, though again it was Nokia that brought high megapixel imagery to the smartphone world with the N95 and N95 8GB, plus the N82 (again with Xenon flash).

In terms of features, remember that all the early Nokia Series 80, Sony Ericsson UIQ and Nokia Series 60 (S60) smartphones from 2002 to 2006 had full operating systems, with vibrant third party application scenes, full file systems, copy and paste(!) and full web browsers (based on the same Webkit code as the iPhone).

With hardware media controls, landscape UI, full file and office editing, advanced imaging functions, and an onboard application store - the Nokia N95 pretending it's a laptop (well, almost), and many months before the original, limited iPhone was even available....

Which doesn't leave much for the iPhone to have 'innovated' with. Today's iPhone ranges do include all of the above (great camera, GPS, sensors, applications, even - cough - copy and paste!), but it has taken most of the celebrated decade for the iPhone to have really caught up with the rest of the industry in terms of raw technology.

Steve Jobs said at the iPhone's launch that it had 'Software that’s at least five years ahead of what’s on any other phone' - which is accurate in that the iPhone is rightly responsible for smartphone UIs that are intuitive enough not to need to ship a paper manual with each phone (remember those?!), but this quote is often mis-remembered as Apple saying that the iPhone itself was five years ahead. Jobs said 'Software', not hardware. And even then the original iPhone lacked third party applications and basic editing functions, so what Steve Jobs really meant was 'a UI that's five years ahead'.

Perhaps showing that screen size was about to become king - identical web browsing on the N95 and original iPhone, but the latter has a faster and more optimised chipset, but moreover a much bigger screen. The iPhone stayed at 3.5" or 4" for years, but made the move to a more competitive 4.7" and 5.5" in 2014. Meanwhile, Nokia topped out at 6" with their Lumia 1520, back in 2013...

Take the iPhone's basic UI concepts (multi-touch zoom, rubber banding, predictive keyboard) and then add them to everything that Nokia, Sony Ericsson and LG (among others) had been using in phone hardware previously - and then, and only then do you get the smartphone as we've known it for the last five years. Apple was very important in the phone story, I agree (not least, making smartphones 'cool' to the mainstream and not just the prerogative of geeks and enthusiasts). But so were all the other manufacturers, regardless of what happened to them or where they are now (for a multitude of mis-management or political reasons that we don't need to repeat here).

Credit where credit's due.

Totally off-topic for AAS and AAWP in a sense, because the end products won't be 100% relevant, but the news is very definitely of interest, with Carl Zeiss (later renamed just ZEISS) producing the award winning optics for every Nokia flagship from the early 2000s onwards, and ending with the last Microsoft Windows-running phones, the Lumia 950 range, at the end of 2015. And now ZEISS is back with 'Nokia' - not quite the same Nokia that had its Devices division bought up and then eventually gutted by Microsoft - but the Nokia name, even on Android OS, is notable and the presence of a ZEISS collaboration is a good sign that the company is back on track. 

[Update] In addition, announced on Twitter, was that (no surprises, but...) there will be no more Microsoft branded devices with ZEISS optics - the original licensing deal, inherited with the Nokia purchase, has ended. See below for the full tweet.

[Update]

The smartphone cooperation between ZEISS and @Microsoft mutually ended with the beginning of the cooperation with HMD.

— ZEISS Camera Lenses (@ZEISSLenses) July 6, 2017

Given that the Lumia 950 range was announced almost two years ago, this isn't really news, but interesting to have it confirmed. It also puts paid to the idea that a future Surface phone will re-use the camera from the Lumia 950, which is a slight shame...

Anyway, from HMD:

Espoo, Finland/ Oberkochen, Germany, 6 July 2017 – HMD Global, the home of Nokia phones, and ZEISS today jointly announced the signing of an exclusive partnership that aims to set new imaging standards within the smartphone industry. This long-term agreement builds on the shared history and expertise between ZEISS and Nokia smartphones.

With a joint ambition to advance the quality of the total imaging experience on smartphones spanning the entire ecosystem from software, services, through to screen quality, and optic design, the partnership will see ZEISS and HMD Global co-develop standard-defining imaging capabilities and will bring the ZEISS brand back to Nokia smartphones. This pledge to constantly improve consumers’ imaging experience is a reflection of the shared values between both businesses – a single minded commitment to quality, true craftsmanship and a desire to improve real life experience.

The relationship between ZEISS and Nokia phones began more than a decade ago, and is founded on a shared passion for innovation and always delivering the best for the consumer. The past collaboration saw ZEISS and Nokia phones driving technology innovations such as the world’s first multi-megapixel mobile phone and many more standard-setting devices, from the Nokia Nseries to those featuring Nokia PureView technologies. This renewed relationship is a long-term commitment to build on that technology innovation over the years to come.

Will we ever again see mighty imaging flagships from Nokia that are as ground-breaking as the Nokia N93, N95, N86 (shown below), N8, 808 and Lumia 1020? Somehow I doubt it, the competition is largely 'catching up', but the ZEISS agreement is certainly welcome.

PS. I've yet to even touch a Nokia-branded Android smartphone, but the '6' looks good and it's due out in the UK early next month.

You know me, I can't resist gadgets, powerbanks, adapters. And I've spotted this 'Smart Wallet' concept over on Indiegogo - it's already funded, so will definitely happen now. Essentially it's a range of wallets with a wireless (and wired) power bank built in, with GPS tracking (should it get lost), and with a camera to snap whoever opens it when it's 'lost'. Is it pricey? Heck, yes, but it's also unique and perfect for that Christmas 2017 present, surely?

From the Indiegogo listing:

Volterman® is the World’s most powerful smart wallet with 5 smart functions: •

• Built-in Powerbank (from 2,000 to 5,000 mAh) 
• Distance Alarm 
• Global GPS Tracking 
• Worldwide WiFi Hotspot 
• Thief Detection Camera

With all the tech inside, Volterman® is slim and lightweight made from premium quality materials.

I have some questions, not least about the standby drain of the integral gadgets. It's also claimed that the power bank can wirelessly charge from your phone, but that would assume that your phone also had Qi coils and support for this?

There are several variants, with different sizes and capabilities:

• Volterman CardHolder
• Volterman BiFold
• Volterman Travel
  

More over at the full Indiegogo introduction page.

Naturally, there's a promo video too, deliberately cheesy and fun(!):

I'm looking forward to reviewing at least one of these variants in due course.

OK, it's not quite a competitor for the AppList Store for Symbian, but SIStore is a valid on-device portal to a full archive of working SIS installation files. See below for the main link and screenshots.

You can find SIStore here, with a direct link to a self-signed installer for an on-device client, giving on-the-go access to obscure apps and games. Here's SIStore in action on my 808:

The opening screen gives video links (which didn't work on my 808, but then that might be something my end) and new app highlights; (right) the applications tab starts you off with categories.

Then it's into application listings, each (right) with screenshots, details and a 'Download link'...

Downloads are served from a web page via HTTP but are routed straight to Symbian's installer. 

There's no checking for what's already on the phone, mind you, this is simply a SIS archive browser. So it's up to you to know what you have and haven't already got installed! And there's also no update mechanism, spotting new versions, of course. So all a little primitive, but at this stage in Symbian's life (i.e. it's been obsolete for almost half a decade) any activity and any archive source is helpful. Especially as there seems some impetus here from active Symbian users to find workarounds for things which have stopped working.

It's not clear how this will behave on phones with production firmware (my 808 has Delight CFW), so comments welcome, let others know how you get on!

This is the sort of feature I often create, but GSM Arena has done such a good job that I'll just link to them instead. They look at screen resolutions and sizes over the last decade - the trend is obvious, but it's always surprising just how far we've come.

Of course, along side the increases are wholesale additions to what we use smartphones for. 'Smart' in 2007 meant Web browsing, email, music, photo sharing, etc. 'Smart' in 2017 includes paying for things, media streaming, live social activities, HD gaming, and more.

Anyway, from the article:

“The [2.8”] display truly looks larger than you might guess. The QVGA resolution stays the same and is adequate for providing great picture quality… “. It may seem like this statement is from another century, but it's just under 10 years old - from our very own Nokia N95 8GB review. And you can kinda see where we were coming from - the average screen in 2007 was 2.3" in diagonal and had less than 84,582 pixels at 171ppi density.

And it got us curious so we decided to dig through our database and see how screens evolved through the years. We picked the 50 most popular phones for each year to analyze - those account for the vast majority of all sales and that way we avoid exotic devices skewing our stats.

We chose 2007 as a starting point, the year Apple revolutionized the smartphone market by releasing its first iPhone. Back then the iPhone's 3.5-inch screen was considered huge and its HVGA resolution was close to the highest available - only devices like Nokia E90 and N800 had more pixels.

The touchscreen revolution then quickly took over the mobile world and screens and resolutions started growing rapidly. In 2010 a couple of key launches happened and they sped up the process rapidly - Apple debuted the iPhone 4 with its Retina screen, while Samsung introduced the Galaxy S - a 4" WVGA flagship.

The following year Samsung released the first Galaxy Note, which had a huge 5.3-inch screen of over 1 million pixels. At that point the 3.5" iPhone was already below average in size, but the Note got more ridicule for its size than praise.

As phablets' popularity grew exponentially average screen size moved from 3.6" in 2011 to 5" in 2014. Even Apple couldn't resist joining the size race as the 4.7" iPhone 6 and 5.5" iPhone 6 Plus came to be. Resolution was growing even faster - by the end of the period Retina screens were only average in terms of pixel density.

In 2015 Android flagships moved to QHD and we saw another huge spike in ppi. Sizes kept increasing as well and the average screen stood at 5.2 inches.

And then everything changed when the mid-rangers attacked. Okay that might be an overstatement, but in 2016 mid-range handsets finally became good enough and they shot up in popularity, which explains the dip in the average resolution that year.

There's more, including charts and tables, in the source article here. 

The fashion in 2017 seems to be near bezel-less phones, made possible by virtual controls now being supported by most OS - we're getting ever closer to those Star Trek slabs of glass. Still, it's good to look back and I reckon that I've (mostly) owned or (in one or two cases just) reviewed all the handsets shown above. Heck, some are classics and they remain in my 'museum'!

PS. Good to see the Nokia E90 and N800 get a mention, forgotten form factors and interfaces...

I'm a sucker for smartphone retrospectives and also one for photography features. Put the two together and you've got a name-checking smartphone rundown from the last 15 years over on GSMArena that looks at how camera resolutions have changed in our phones. The highwater mark, of course, was the Nokia 808 PureView, from 2012, but the whole 'arc' is an interesting rogues champions gallery.

From the GSMArena post:

We've traced the rise of the cameraphone before, but since we're in a lull in the megapixel race, we wanted to look back and check the milestones reached along the way to the Nokia 808 PureView - the 41MP monster that (five years later) is still the phone with the highest resolution camera (and only matched by Lumia 1020 since).

The Audiovox PM8920 may have been the first to cross the 1MP line with its 1.3MP camera in 2004. Niche brands aside, Motorola brought out the 1000 series phones that same year - the touch-focused A1000, the E1000 bar and V1000 flip. The Windows-powered MPx220 also joined in.

Motorola A1000 • Motorola E1000 • Motorola V1000 • Motorola MPx220

Then in early 2005 Samsung unveiled the P850, a flip phone with a rotating screen and a 3.15MP camera. Sound familiar? You may be thinking of the Nokia N90 from a few months later and its 2MP camera (with Carl Zeiss optics). Before the year's end, the Nokia N80 matched Samsung at 3.15MP.

And then looking ahead further in the article:

There was a brief flirtation with 13MP by Motorola and Toshiba, but Nokia put an end to the debate in 2012 with, yes, the Nokia 808 PureView - one of the best cameraphones of all time.

Its monstrous sensor was 1/1.2", the biggest we've seen on a mobile device. To put that in perspective, the sensor was 3 times the size of a 1/2.3" sensor like the ones we see in the Xperia XZ Premium, Google Pixel and a few others.

The sheer size of the sensor meant that despite its massive 41MP resolution, pixels were still quite large at 1.4µm (the Nokia N8 was at 1.75µm pixels). But the genius of the phone was elsewhere - mature image processing and leveraging on that resolution to enable high-quality digital zoom for 8MP photos. Advanced image processing is at the heart of the best cameras today.

Nokia kept things going for a bit longer, in 2013 it came out with the Lumia 1020 (running Windows Phone). It kept the 41MP resolution, though it shrunk the sensor to a still huge 1/1.5" (pixel size went down to 1.12µm). However, megapixel counts dropped off quickly after that.

The rise of resolution according to tech and then the fall again as other methods of achieving results came into prominence (e.g. what I've dubbed PureView take 2) is fascinating.

Also of interest might be my own 'Top 10 phone cameras of all time', in which I put the Nokia 808 at no. 4 and the Nokia Lumia 1020 at no. 5. Interestingly, my no. 1, the Lumia 950, isn't mentioned at all in the source article, probably because it focussed (pun intended) on fine tuning the innovations from the previous few years rather than breaking new ground in terms of resolution or pixel size.

What's this? A review of a smartphone that doesn't run Symbian on AAS? And that doesn't run Windows 10 Mobile on AAWP? Actually yes - it's my first look at the new Nokia 6, running Android. And it's here because it's the return of the classic Nokia brand that I've written about so many times on these sites. The personnel behind it are mostly different, the OS certainly is, but is it worth casting a look in the 'new' Nokia's direction?

Probably not, though hopefully this mini-review will be of interest.

This Nokia is still designed in Finland, it’s still made like a tank, but the actual firm behind it is HMD Global and all the manufacturing is in China. So take the ‘Nokia’ branding with just a pinch of salt. There's little DNA here from the classic Nokia designs of the past, though some visual clues have been taken from phones such as the Nokia N9 (running Meego, so that's the fourth OS mentioned in the last two paragraphs!), Lumia 800 and Lumia 920. 

As a smartphone, the ‘6’ is well styled, I was enormously impressed by how solid it is, with slab aluminium sides and polished chamfered edges. It's heavy too, at almost 170g, almost in phablet territory with a 5.5” screen.

The fingerprint sensor, down the bottom, is 100% accurate, but the specification here means that it takes a second from placing your thumb to the Nokia 6 being unlocked and the display powered up. Is a second too long? Not for the target market, though anyone exposed to flagships (think iPhone 7, Google Pixel) will notice a difference.

Around the perimeter is a welcome 3.5mm headphone jack, all metal volume and power buttons, a speaker aperture (of which more later) and... a microUSB charging and data port.

That’s right - microUSB on a £200 smartphone in 2017, rather than the now ubiquitous USB Type C. It feels very out of place and my theory is that the Nokia 6 design was actually finalised at least 18 months ago, back at the tail end of 2015, when USB Type C was still only on flagships (the Lumia 950 and 950 XL famously launched with this, among the first smartphones with 'C'). The delays HMD Global faced getting the Nokia 6 to market have left it with this single anachronistic spec point. Most users won’t mind, of course, microUSB jacks and chargers are everywhere still - and, to be fair, it’s just about the only major disappointment in the Nokia 6. For the price.

On the back is the reassuring ‘NOKIA’ logo, just as on the Symbian phones and Lumias of old, plus a very ‘Nokia’ vertical raised camera island. I suspect that the raising is purely cosmetic, since there’s no reason for this pretty average phone camera to need the extra thickness. I’ll come back to the camera later on.

The display is IPS LCD and 1080p resolution. With the RGB stripe (i.e. all pixels represented, unlike on AMOLED screens), the screen is extremely crisp and decently bright, though I noted that contrast levels weren’t brilliant in the sun. 

The top earpiece is used as a ‘tweeter’ and piped the left channel for any stereo audio. This is - absolutely - a hack of the highest order. The results when watching Netflix or similar are a definitely imbalance in the sound, with 90% of the volume coming from the bottom firing main speaker and 10% from the earpiece. Much of the time this doesn’t really matter, but just occasionally something’s supposed to be happening in the left channel in terms of music or effects and… you can hardly hear it. With proper stereo now on the HP Elite x3 and Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro (etc.) a mainly-right-channel hack just doesn't cut it.

Still, for sat-nav, podcast and speakerphone use, the speaker combination is absolutely fine and pretty loud. Also on the audio front is a FM radio aerial built-in, not something you get on every phone nowadays, and indicating the Nokia 6’s potential markets, in countries where data isn’t ubiquitous and where FM radio is still a major source of news and entertainment.

You also get support for 5GHz Wi-fi and for NFC, the former meaning that HMD has gone the extra mile in terms of licensing all the Snapdragon 430’s capabilities, and the latter meaning that Android Pay is a ‘go’.

Imaging was always going to be a let down after the best of Nokia cameras in the Symbian and Windows Phone worlds, of course. And it is. The 16MP f/2.0 main camera shoot in 12MP in 16:9 and results are generally OK. The Phase Detection Auto-Focus regularly got confused by some of my arty macro shots, but you’ll have no issues for regular shots. In low light, results are distinctly ‘meh’, though not overly noisy, so there’s some effective noise reduction at work, even if details are then not as clear as you’d like. Again, think of the price, though - results are inline with this. Just don't see the word 'NOKIA' and think 'great camera'!

Although there’s no physical shutter button on the Nokia 6, a tap on the volume up button also takes the shot and you quickly get used to this arrangement. Importantly, the squared sides of the phone mean that keeping a grip while snapping is very easy.

Video capture is at 1080p but there’s no software or hardware stabilisation (OIS), so results are unremarkable. The front camera’s 8MP, by the way, and also not worth dwelling on.

The Snapdragon 430 chipset in here is paired with 3GB RAM and the Nokia 6 chugs along happily in this configuration, without ever really seeming speedy. The target market won’t mind and games work just fine. 32GB of internal storage is backed by microSD support, though you do have to sacrifice the optional second (2G-only) nanoSIM slot for this - not a big deal for most users, I suspect.

The OS here is vanilla Android 7.1.1, with nothing fancy added. Because of this, I suspect, it’s trivial for Nokia to keep things up to date, with the August security updates from Google only days after the Nexus and Pixel phones, with Google Assistant available out of the box, and with the official Google Pixel launcher. If you're thinking of switching to Android from Symbian or Windows Phone then start with something 'stock' like this - it'll break you into Android very easily.

Android is an easy transition from Symbian, with many similar UI and OS concepts, though it's unlikely anyone's coming straight from the latter to the former - but it will still seem familiar to AAS readers who have been out of touch with the phone world recently. Android is also pretty accessible to anyone used to Windows 10 Mobile, given the latter's UI convergence with the rest of the world recently - think hamburger and '...' menus, for example.

Moving straight to this Android-powered Nokia from Windows Phone 8.1 is more of a culture shock, though at least the massively better stocked application store is a sweetener. Any application that you've ever heard of is available here. Every shop, every service, every bank, you hardly need to touch the Chrome web browser - though that too is excellent and arguably better than Edge on Windows 10 Mobile and certainly superior to Web on Symbian and IE on WP8.1, of course.

Battery life was good in my tests, with the 3000mAh battery working with the comparatively low end chipset to easily get through a day. In theory there’s fast charging, compatible with Quick Charge 3.0 - this comes with the Snapdragon 430, though in my tests I couldn't get the Nokia 6 to acknowledge any of my fast chargers, so perhaps there's a software update needed to enable this.

Overall, the Nokia 6 is an unremarkable smartphone, almost every component is a downgrade from the Lumia 950, for example, it performs and is in the same realm as the Lumia 650, though I have to give props to Nokia/HMD for the terrifically solid construction and design. It's a phone I kept picking up, it feels like a serious tool, and it's a damn good start to the reinvention of the Nokia brand.

Comments welcome - does this comeback for the 'NOKIA' brand interest you at all? Or does Android put you off? Or perhaps the less than stellar camera? Or maybe you relish owning a Nokia again, and with 2017 mainstream apps and support?

PS. Today sees the launch of the higher spec Nokia 8 and I'll cover this at some point too. 

PPS. I'll be reviewing this in much more depth in the next Phones Show and on Android Beat, if you're interested...

Just a podcast of interest - or at least a particular episode. I was the guest of Myriam Joire on the Mobile Tech Podcast this week - and, predictably, we chatted about smartphone imaging. For an hour. And could probably have gone an extra hour if time had allowed. We cover some of the past classics, such as the Nokia N8 and 808, we cover the Lumia 1020 and 950, but all in the context of today's Android-powered imaging flagships. And yes, I do mention Xenon. At some length 8-)

Here's the podcast, anyway, worth an hour of your time if you're really into your camera phones!

We get a bit carried away and sorry for talking at top speed - if it's too fast for you then listen at 75% speed! That's what a little passion does for the recording process....

See also the home page for Myriam's podcast.

I'd just like to draw your attention to two specific podcast episodes that you might not have been aware of. Both aired in the last couple of weeks on brand new shows and both are of direct interest.

Firstly, Richard Yates is part of the team at a new podcast, 'The TechBox', based in the UK, and in episode 5 he's flying solo but his subject matter is his history with Nokia, the brand, the hardware and the company. Over the last 25 years. 

It's a good listen, with no real omissions as such, though it's assumed that you know some of the tech background, such as Microsoft buying Nokia's Devices division in 2013. Regular readers here will be able to fill in these contextual gaps though. Richard's been through many of the same devices as you and I, so it's refreshing to hear someone else's experience.

And yes, he cover's some of Nokia's mistakes, including not capitalising on their 'app store'. I'd go back further to Nokia's 'Download!' Store around 2005, but Richard's reference to the 'Ovi Store' (2009) only being for Nokia handsets as a 'mistake' doesn't quite ring true as a mistake since by then there weren't really any other Symbian licensees (just one Samsung handset that had much bigger issues). A bigger mistake, also identified, was general mis-management over the decade.

Richard highlights some of my favourite smartphones, in particular the Nokia N93, N8 and - of course - the 808 PureView.

You can subscribe to The TechBox here.

Secondly, I was a guest on Myriam Joire's new 'Mobile Tech Podcast' a few weeks ago, in episode 16, chatting about all aspects of camera phones. The chat was very much driven by Myriam, who wanted to explain in detail the various parameters that make up a good phone camera, but I think I held my own and managed to get in some chat about Xenon flash(!) and some classic Nokia PureView phones, the 808 and 1020. 

Myriam had been a guest on my own Phones Show Chat (now well into its 400s!) several times, so it was good to be invited back by her in return. See what you think. You can subscribe to her Mobile Tech Podcast via the RSS feed here.

Reader Martin Roth runs a YouTube channel, in part dedicated to comparing camera phones - and he's now put up videos on the Nokia 808 PureView versus the Xperia XZ1 and Galaxy Note 8, both running Android. They're in German, but see below for how to get English subtitles!

Firstly the Nokia 808 versus the XZ1. Maximise the window and then dive into the YouTube player settings - set the 'subtitles' to be 'Auto translate' and then 'English' (or whatever):

And then the Nokia 808 versus the Galaxy Note 8:

Comments? The subtitle system makes the videos something of a hard watch, not least because the videos flickered for me as a result, but hey... Some Nokia 808 content - in 2017!

No, not the Nokia N8. This is the Android-powered Nokia 8, made by HMD Global, of course, in 2017. But it's still a phone that I've had lots of emails about, so I arranged a shootout over on AAWP here. Now, at some point I'll get the Nokia 8 in here, in the office, and the natural shootout would be Nokia N8 vs 808 vs Nokia 8 - all the 8s....!!! Watch this space.

In the meantime, here's some text from my conclusion:

This was one of the most requested AAWP phone camera shootouts and thanks to KF Chan for helping make this happen. One of the reasons why I'd not moved heaven and earth to get a Nokia 8 in for review yet (though I have been asking PR) was that I knew it would be something of a disappointment. And so it proved. Despite two cameras, OIS and ZEISS optics, HMD Global doesn't have anywhere near the same imaging expertise that the Nokia guys had back in the day (and at Microsoft until they all left or got made redundant), the Nokia 8 has sensors that are too small, no oversampling and no secret sauce (along Google Pixel lines) to rescue the results.

At some point, no doubt, I will get the '8' in for a full review and at that time I can do more head to heads with, for example, the Nokia N8 and 808 from the Symbian world, since those too have been requested. Can 'Nokia' (actually HMD Global) fix up the camera with updates or is the Nokia 8 destined to underperform? Currently I'd class the imaging as not worthy of the prestigious Nokia brand name - as someone who loved the N82, N8, 808 and 1020 before the 950, I hear 'Nokia' and I think 'amazing camera', and this simply isn't the case for the '8'. Yet.

Which would win of the Nokia 8, 808 and N8? That's actually a tougher call since the latter two predated the modern OIS era. So it all depends whether I allowed tripod use. Or had very, very steady hands for the low light test cases!