The problem with the tech world is, from an operating system provider's point of view, that the goalposts keep moving. These perambulating pieces of wood killed Symbian, killed Blackberry, have almost killed Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile, and, one day, may even kill iOS as we know it today. With hindsight, it's all too clear, but at the time OS coders were making sensible choices. 

I'll use Symbian as an example here, since this is being posted on AAS as well as AAWP. Back in 1998 when Symbian was being designed, and even in the early 2000s, when the first smartphones became available, the concept of getting 'online' was still quite new and connectivity certainly not taken for granted. In many cases, the connection was via GPRS and cost significant money. Which is why the only 'silent' connectivity was via Wifi and any attempt by phone software to start up a GPRS data connection was accompanied by (to paraphrase) an 'Are you sure?' message.

This legacy impression of a 'nanny' OS stayed with Symbian for much of its life, right up to the end (in 2012, with the last Symbian device, the classic Nokia 808), though from about 2007 onwards the warnings were dialled right back as connectivity became ubiquitous and relatively inexpensive (or bundled). The goalposts that had constrained the OS had moved and the OS had to adapt - and it did, to a degree. 

Another good example from the Symbian days is the Web browser. Much ridiculed today by many, this is unfair since back in 2006 when it appeared it was a superb example of a 'modern' Webkit-based browser, letting relatively tiny phones render full web sites (of the time) in a sensible way. There was nothing to touch it until the iPhone's Safari and far greater horsepower appeared in 2007 to take mobile browsing up a notch. However, the Web is a fast changing beast. Pages which were typically 50kb of HTML and 500k of images in 2006 have become 1MB of HTML and scripting, with 5MB of images, ten years later. At least a ten fold increase in size, plus an extra increase in terms of complexity and interactivity. The web was 95% reference ten years ago, and now it's 95% interactive. Those moving goalposts again.

And so to today and this editorial in the context of Windows 10 Mobile being increasingly sidelined by the exact same phenomenon. I'll use two examples. 

Firstly, mobile payments. This wasn't a 'thing' even five years ago, but the idea of using NFC for paying for things 'contactless' using a phone is now ubiquitous. In 2017, people expect to be able to pay for things using their watch, for goodness sake. Apple started things off with the iPhone 6 and Apple Pay, but Google was only a year or two behind with (wait for it) Android Pay. And any phone with a NFC antenna and some form of biometric authentication can now join in the fun. When Windows Phone was designed, back in 2008-2010, the very idea of using NFC for payments was unheard of - Nokia and others had been using the tech to pair phones to Bluetooth accessories, look up NFC tags, and 'tap to share' for years. But the goalposts were about to change again - and, despite numerous rumours, trials and public outings, 'Microsoft Pay' isn't ready. And for Windows on phones it's far too late now, of course.

Secondly, compatibility with the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart devices across the world. In the home, at work, in hotels and garages. My eye was drawn by a recent commenter on an editorial here: "...it has no apps. I cannot use my lights, my heating, my speakers, my watch, Chromecast, my door lock...". Now, since when was it the function of a phone to control all these things? Moving goalposts again...

Over the last 12 months, I gather, the phone is the control panel for many digital gadgets now - at least if you believe the smart home geeks. And I'll admit that it's true that when you open the box of any serious gadget these days (a good example being my recent drone), the first thing you notice is a QR code or similar to hook you up to the manufacturer's 'companion app' on the iOS App Store or Android Play Store. Such companion apps are rarely compulsory, but they are seen as useful - and they're nowhere to be seen, across the board, on Windows Phone or Windows 10 Mobile.

It's no one's hard and fast fault that these moving goalposts have caused Windows 10 Mobile to fail to score, as it were. Though it would have been nice if Microsoft had put enough resources behind the OS to retrofit payment support and sort out bank partners, at least. If there's one underlying common theme behind the lack of progress of Windows Phone and then Windows 10 Mobile in the mobile world then it's lack of commitment and lack of agility at the OS development level, which are both down to Microsoft.

It's telling, though you can't always just go by version numbers, that Android has been through five major new OS versions while Windows on phones has gone through only two (or maybe three, depending on how you count). And iOS has also gone through five. 

When the goalposts start moving, only a truly actively developed OS can be reworked and reshaped.

8 versus 8, etc. I've lost count of the number of times readers have asked me to pit the new Nokia 8 against its namesake, the classic Nokia N8, from 2010. However much a monster the latter was, surely 2017 technology can trump it? I'm also including the reigning champion, the Nokia-designed (and Microsoft-made) Lumia 950. This will win out overall, but it's a useful modern age benchmark for the others - I'm genuinely curious to see how a 7 year old phone does!

• As usual, I've tried to match resolutions as much as possible, though in practice this only meant keeping the Lumia 950 in its oversampled 8MP mode, since the other two phones output naturally at 9MP. I'm not worried about shortchanging the 950 because it will pick up extra capability in this mode when looking at low light shots and when zoomed.
• It was suggested to me that I try the Nokia 8 with the 'hacked' Google HDR+ camera, sideloaded, but this is beyond the scope of this site. It's not trivial to find and install and that's best for Android die-hards.
• I often get criticised for using the Lumia's output as the basis for the 'overall scene' shot, so I've shaken things up here and used the Nokia 8's versions for the overviews.
• All photos were on full automatic, except where stated and all shots apart from the 'party' mock-up were handheld.

Because I'm comparing the output of three phone cameras, not two, I can't use the AAWP comparator, so I'll use static crops - but at least your page will load more quickly this way!

Test 1: Sunny suburbia

Ideal conditions, and plenty of detail. Here's the scene from the Nokia 8:

And here are crops from the photos taken by the Nokia N8, the Lumia 950, and Nokia 8, in each case click the crop to download the original JPG photo for inspection:

Under such perfect lighting, there's not much in it here. The differences are mainly down to sharpening settings in the various camera applications. The Nokia N8 famously eschews ANY image processing - what you see in its JPGs are essentially what comes out of the Bayer filter on the sensor (with just JPG compression). Which is why its photos look immensely natural, yet not as 'clear' as with modern phones. It turns out that most people prefer a little colour enhancement, a little sharpening, and so on, to make photos 'pop'.

I'm loathe to pick a winner here, though the Nokia 8's version is a notch down from the other two. Certainly the Nokia N8's photo is astonishing - look at the greenery on the right of the crop here, with no sharpening to make mess of detail. While the 950's photo stands out to the eye immediately.

Nokia N8: 9 points; Lumia 950: 9 pts; Nokia 8: 8 pts.

Test 2: Sunny scene, into the light

Ideal conditions again, but trying to make things slightly tricker by shooting half into the sun and with extremes of light and shade. Here's the scene from the Nokia 8:

And here are crops from the photos taken by the Nokia N8, the Lumia 950, and Nokia 8, in each case click the crop to download the original JPG photo for inspection:

No real problems for the three camera phones here, though the N8 was struggling with dynamic range in the brighter parts of the scene, plus the contrast was poor. Meanwhile the Nokia 8 does a pretty good job overall and the Lumia 950 tops the comparison again, with pin-sharp detail and good dynamic range.

Nokia N8: 6 points; Lumia 950: 9 pts; Nokia 8: 8 pts.

Test 3: Zoom test

Good lighting, though the sun had now gone behind a cloud. I was aiming for a 2x zoom on the clock, though there's no exact UI gauge in any of these phones to get exactly 2x. Here's the scene from the Nokia 8:

And here are crops from the photos taken by the Nokia N8, the Lumia 950, and Nokia 8, in each case click the crop to download the original JPG photo for inspection:

In each case there was blocky digital zoom involved, of course, though slightly less on the Lumia 950, given its underlying 16MP resolution at 16:9. Which is why it manages more genuine detail in the crop above. However, the infamous Lumia yellow cast is in evidence yet again and somewhat spoils the photo. Meanwhile the N8 and Nokia 8 are more or less on a par, showing that imaging technology hasn't progressed far in terms of zoom and detail in good light in seven years (though low light proves otherwise, as we shall see below).

Nokia N8: 7 points; Lumia 950: 8 pts; Nokia 8: 6 pts.

Test 4: Indoors, average lighting

Inside the church there was plenty of detail and lower light all round, so the OIS in the Lumia 950 and Nokia 8 would be starting to have an effect. Here's the scene from the Nokia 8:

And here are crops from the photos taken by the Nokia N8, the Lumia 950, and Nokia 8, in each case click the crop to download the original JPG photo for inspection:

Despite its large sensor, the Nokia N8 has only a f/2.8 aperture (hey, this was 2010) and so it's just starting to struggle here and with no OIS to allow a longer exposure. So we get more noise. The 7 years newer Nokia 8 doesn't do much better, mind you, with much smaller sensor but larger aperture, so the two kind of cancel each other out. OIS is there to keep the Nokia 8 details crisp-ish, mind you. The Lumia 950's image is amazing. Yet again. Fabulous OIS, large BSI sensor, top rate optics, oversampling (to get rid of noise), and so on. Look at the detail in this crop. THAT'S how good the Lumia 950 camera is. Just saying...

Nokia N8: 6 points; Lumia 950: 10 pts; Nokia 8: 7 pts.

Test 5: Really low light

One of the alcoves in the church offered an almost pitch dark scene, yet with detail that might be pulled out if the phone cameras were good enough. Here's the scene from the Nokia 8, already lighter than it was to my eyes:

And here are crops from the photos taken by the Nokia N8, the Lumia 950, and Nokia 8, in each case click the crop to download the original JPG photo for inspection:

Your eyes will tell you what you need to know here. The Nokia N8 just wasn't built for this type of arty low light shot and the short exposure and small aperture are telling. The Nokia 8 does slightly better, with the OIS allowing a 1/10s exposure and minimal noise - and, to be honest, it gets close to what I could see with my eyes once they'd adjusted to the lighting conditions. But the Lumia 950 works a miracle here (appropriate, given the setting!) by turning night into day, as it were. The Lumia 950's photo is nothing like reality in terms of matching my vision, but you can't deny that it's impressive how it can ramp up to a full 1/4s exposure and still get precise detail. Maybe the Lumia 950's OIS is just better than anyone else's? Just wondering...

Nokia N8: 3 points; Lumia 950: 9 pts; Nokia 8: 6 pts.

Test 6: Party time!

My infamous party mock-up test, with me laughing and definitely not posing, mimicking taking candid snaps at a party or evening event. I was kind to each phone camera and using a tripod (and timer), but they still struggled a bit. Here's the scene from the Nokia 8, already lighter than it was to my eyes:

And here are crops from the photos taken by the Nokia N8, the Lumia 950, and Nokia 8, in each case click the crop to download the original JPG photo for inspection:

The N8, with its Xenon flash, obviously wins out here, you can see the clear Chewbacca graphic on the water bottle, though at the expense of a little noise. Still, this would be your best shot by a hundred miles for candid snaps at an event. Meanwhile the Lumia 950 does its best, but seems to have made a mess of the focussing (e.g. look at the tree) and its shot wouldn't really pass muster. The Nokia 8's result is noisier but does at least manage to get static parts of the scene in (laser) focus.

Nokia N8: 9 points; Lumia 950: 4 pts; Nokia 8: 5 pts.

Verdict

Adding up the points, we get:

• Lumia 950: 49/60 pts
• Nokia 8: 40/60 pts
• Nokia N8: 40/60 pts

Which is very interesting - I'm saying that the Nokia flagship from seven years ago performs equally on balance with an imaging 'flagship' from 2017 (the Nokia 8). Of course, this is factoring in the unique (for 2017) Xenon flash and using it in indoor settings. Apart from this use case, of course, the larger aperture on the Nokia 8 gives it the edge. But the '8 vs 8' ended up as a dead heat - who'd have thought it?

The Lumia 950 is streets ahead of the Nokia 8, of course, as I proved in my collaborative features here and here. If I'd gone back and redone the party mock-up test, I think I could have squeezed a few extra points out of it too. I'm just saying...(!)

With all the recent renders and patents seemingly predicting a 'Surface Mobile' this Spring, with double-hinged design allowing use as a phone or mini-tablet, I thought it appropriate to look back into the past - such a double hinged design was seen before on a business-aimed smartphone, back in 2007, just over a decade ago. And thanks to a kind reader, I've got the Nokia E90 in front of my camera again. It's not much actual use in 2018, but it's extra food for thought.

Not least because there's a certain tactile pleasure in transforming a device. You may remember the old 'slider' T9 phones, also a decade ago? Anyone else remember sliding them open and closed, open and closed? Just because we could. It's the same with this Nokia E90, arguably the last of the Nokia 'Communicator' line of business-centric smartphones. It's impossible to hold it and not keep opening the hinge, enjoying the different angles, closing it again. Rinse and repeat.

Admittedly there have been some laptop-size double-hinged designs in recent years, allowing 'tent', 'laptop', and other modes, but I'm struggling to think of any phones that included such design elements and ambitions.

One possible weakpoint of a hinged design is the data cables that have to pass through the hinges, of course - repeated bending might result in failure and repair. Yet this particular, rather battle-scarred, Nokia E90 is still fully working, ten years later, so maybe the wiring worries can be put to rest. Certainly the wiring in the Surface Mobile renders we've seen so far would have to be routed in a similar way.

Of course, one chief difference in form factor with the E90, compared to the modern day renders of a possible Surface Mobile, is that, when closed, there's an external phone-centric interface, plus when opened, there's a hardware QWERTY keyboard. Plus it's also important to note that the E90 wasn't designed to unfold further than 180º, unlike modern double-hinged devices, which usually wrap all the way around.

Maybe I'm making too much of all this, but I did want to get the E90 in again (after so many years) just so that I could play with a double-hinged design in a phone form factor again. It's still satisfying, it's still sturdy, it's still flexible. Just imagine the same standard of hinge (only better and closer), with a slightly larger plan form factor for each device half, then think of thinner halves thanks to modern tech advancements, and finally 2018 internals and Windows 10 S as an operating system, with the 'CShell' Start UI.

All quite exciting really. If I was a betting man, I'd put the appearance of a Surface Mobile (other names suggested have included 'Surface Note', but I'm sticking with my original guess) in H1 of 2018 at 2:1 'on'. What about you? Anyone else remember the Nokia E90? Were there any other double-hinged phones you can think of? Let's take a short trip down memory lane together... and also into the future!

PS. The Surface renders here are from the skillful CAD renders by designer David Breyer. Patent drawings are from the Microsoft filing here.

I go into some depth when testing smartphone (stills) cameras, I even occasionally test smartphone video capture. But I rarely test the audio that's captured. Whether you're videoing some live music in front of you or just shooting video at a party, the louder, clearer and higher quality the better - audio is often more important than picture quality, I contend*. Here's a quick test of seven contenders, back to back, play along at home and let your own ears decide!

* one truism is that it's much easier to watch a video with poor picture quality and excellent audio than one with excellent picture and poor audio. Try it and see!

Now, obviously, I can only test what I have to hand, so this isn't an industry-wide comprehensive test. But I have included:

• the all time classic, the Nokia 808 PureView (hence me posting this on AAS as well)
• the Lumia 950 XL (heck, any top end Lumia would have done here, they all have the same HAAC microphones, so I could equally well have put in the 1020 or 930, etc.)
• the Nokia 8, marking the return of Nokia to the flagship smartphone market and with 'Ozo' audio capture technology - can it live up to the standards of Nokias of old?
• the ZTE Axon 7, running Android. This is the Chinese version with quad-DAC and high end everything, including microphones.
• the Marshall London, running Android. The original audio-specialist phone, capable of recording Motorhead and playing it too through high fidelity speakers.
• the Google Pixel 2 XL, the very latest Android flagship, though lower end here as it only records audio in mono (like the iPhone), possibly for wind protection and noise cancellation reasons.
• the Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro, the highest end Windows 10 Mobile handset still sold. It has wonderful speakers, but the microphones are somewhat dull and unimpressive - as you'll see.

As you'll have noticed, many of these phones have high end audio - mics and speakers - reflecting that I tend to hoard such beasts, to the exclusion of less capable devices for multimedia. Hence no Samsungs, no iPhones. Oh well.

I'd been looking for a rock gig near me, even a pub band would have done, in terms of delivering a challenging volume to capture. But in the end I settled for the repeatable 'treat'(!) of my trusty 12 string guitar at point blank range (around 30cm), as you'll see and hear below. 

I was looking to capture the guitar's sound without distortion and with good dynamic range, in terms of hearing all the various strings and frequencies. Finally, I was looking at captured and encoding volume, i.e. how loud and effective would the soundtrack be? And to that end, I've left the volumes 'as is' in the montage below, i.e. nothing's been normalised or tampered with.

As you might expect, you'll need to watch/listen with good headphones on, to really appreciate the differences:

Aside from my rough and ready scoring in the video, I did come to a number of conclusions:

1. I was astonished that none of the phones showed any distortion. Do the same test on most phones from, say, 2013, and only the Nokias might have produced a clean recording. But microphones have definitely become more capable in time. The HAAC (high amplitude) mics used in the top end Nokias and Lumias are still hard to beat, but the competition is gaining.
2. The clearest, most vibrant audio capture here was by the Nokia 8, which uses three microphones and some proprietary 'Ozo' algorithms to produce a 'spatial surround' effect. As with speaker tricks like Dolby Atmos, it's very slightly 'artificial', but there's no doubting how dramatic it sounds, as your own ears can attest. In the scoring above, I gave the Nokia 8 the same maximum score as the Lumia 950 XL, but I did toy with the idea of giving points for stereo separation and/or ambience. If I had, the Nokia 8 would have won out overall.
3. With my Windows 10 phone hat on, the IDOL 4 Pro's audio capture is disappointing, but I did note that it produced a quiet soundtrack when I reviewed it a few months back. I suspect that its stereo microphones aren't strictly HAAC and that Alcatel compromised by tuning the volume down a few notches so as not to distort when someone tried filming something loud.
4. Even though the Nokia 8's 'Ozo' tech makes for the most vibrant audio experience, I still prefer the old classic Nokia 808's capture all round when shooting video, since it has the lowest noise floor, i.e. when no one is speaking or playing music, there's the least 'hiss'. This might be down to the OS, but more probably because of a) the lower speed chipset used, and b) the care and attention paid to components and shielding by the wizards on Damian Dinning's team at Nokia circa 2011.

Comments welcome, of course. Do you agree with my scoring? Were you impressed by the Ozo sound stage? Do you often shoot loud music with your Lumia and are you satisfied with the audio side of things?

Back in April, I linked to a new custom firmware for the venerable Nokia N86 8MP, and the guys behind it are at it again, with a big update, making the old N86 usable even in 2018! Details and links below.

Over and above the original firmware (which had a huge changelog over the stock Nokia software), we now have:

• Fixed some bugs we found in original FW that was done by Nokia, for example if flash original last FW or make hard reset and after that open preinstalled Adobe PDF LE app, default zoom in settings will be about 5xxxxxx%, now that and some other faults fixed;
• The standard OVi standby mode is replaced by the more functional one from the Nokia 6760 Slide, where exist only application shortcuts, 8 calendar notes and E-Mail client, also exist some more standby modes to choose one that will cover all needs;
• Built-in with restriction on exceptionally viewing documents "QuickOffice v4.1.73", updated to full-featured retail version 6.2.217 from E-series phones, with the possibility of their creation and editing;
• To turn off the red LED during photo and video shooting, you need to activate the added "RemoveRedLED" patch in the built-in "ROMPatcher Plus v3.1";
• Built-in full support for SHA-2 certificates and added new root certificates, which is necessary for full-fledged work in the modern Internet;
• SymbianWorld icon pack updated with some more icons for 3rd party apps. Now it's more complete and good looking;
• Original equaliser settings a bit changed. Now music in headphones sounds better than on default settings;
• For the flash use built-in program button "Flashlight". It's stable operation is guaranteed only when you activate and deactivate app from the menu, and only the central navigation key. If U want extra features go and buy PhoneTorch from Harald Meyer for OS9.3: http://www.phonetorch.com/wb/
• CFW can be flashed via J.A.F. or Phoenix (just delete red content file in Phoenix settings, all CRC32 checksums fitted to original FW files, so Phoenix is ok too).

All bets are off in terms of tech support and help, mind you. It's assumed that you know how to use JAF or Phoenix and the requisite flashing tools. If you don't then.... best stay away!!

A year or so ago I opined that Google's HDR+ software, the foundation of the cameras on the Pixel and Pixel 2 smartphones (and much cloned and hacked on other devices), effectively represents the next phase of the PureView idea pioneered by Nokia back in 2007 and eventually brought to market in the 808 in 2012. With commentary in video form, here's a comparison of results from three landmark phone cameras, which I'm dubbing PureView phases 1, 2, and 3. For those in the know, these ideas dominate the world of phone photography.

This video of mine was shot as part of my Phones Show, which you can find more about here.

As usual with video embeds, maximise the playback window or click through to YouTube, as appropriate, and make sure you're watching at 1080p in the Settings:

Comments welcome. 

The computational photography in the Pixel 2 XL certainly seems a spiritual successor to the Nokia and Lumia PureView concept, but as usual, with my AAWP hat on, I can't help but wonder what could be achieved if only there was a 2018 follow-up to the 950, with more modern internals!

Authors Pekka Nykänen and Merina Salminen published a book in Finnish, back in 2015, about the fall of Nokia from 2010-ish through to the (then) present day, 2015. The central character in all of this was Stephen Elop, as you'll have guessed from my headline. It's a very long book, but it has now been translated into English and is available for free. See the quotes and links below. It covers the latter Symbian years, the still-borm Meego, the switch to Windows Phone and the eventual decline and sale of the vast Nokia empire.

Having just finished speed-reading it, there's a lot of direct interest and a lot of sense talked in the analysis.

And at the risk of saying 'I told you so', the eventual conclusion by the authors and most contributors, after over a hundred pages (even in A4 PDF form), is that despite all the other issues Nokia and the industry was facing, the absolutely crucial mistake that Stephen Elop made was leaking the famous 'Burning Platform' memo, effectively shooting Symbian OS in the head and cutting off sales of Symbian-based phones to networks within days, leaving Nokia with a sales shortfall in the billions of dollars, rather than delaying the public cessation of Symbian commitment until Windows Phone-based Lumias were ready for sale.

Which is what I said, many times, on AAS and AAWP back in the day, in articles and on podcasts. Ahem.

But there's vastly more in the book. It gives all sides of the Nokia story over this period, it'll have you cheering for Elop one moment and villifying him the next. 

From the post at React etc.:

Now there is a translation of the book that is translated by a community and made available for free under the under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

The book is available in HTML format as well as suitable formats for Android, iPhone, iPad and Kindle formats. Operation Elop - Final years of Nokia Mobile Phones free ebook download:

• Operation Elop - The final years of Nokia's mobile phones free download EPUB
• Operation Elop - The final years of Nokia's mobile phones free download MOBI
• Operation Elop - The final years of Nokia's mobile phones free download PDF

There are masses of juicy nuggets and back-story that even I didn't fully appreciate, not least how close Nokia was to going with Google and Android back at the end of 2010.

If you have a spare afternoon then load this on your smartphone or Kindle and knock yourself out. You'll be better informed!

John Velasco, over at PhoneArena, has put together an industry wide, 16 year video overview of camera phones that's worth a quick look. It's not perfect and the Nokia N93 is a notable omission (IMHO), but loads of Nokia smartphones get featured, including the venerable 808 and 1020, of course.

If you want something more textual then see my own (and now slightly out of date) 'The Top 20 Phone Camera Innovations of All Time', from 2012, six years ago!

As usual with video embeds, maximise the window for best effect, or click through to YouTube directly, depending on how you're reading this article:

Maybe it's high time for me to update my 2012 article? Watch this space (for a rainy day, methinks....)!

PS. In search of more recent content here on AAWP along the same lines, there's also The 'SteveMark'(!) top 10 phone cameras of all time' and 'Nokia camera 7 year challenge: Lumia 950 & Nokia 8 take on 2010's Nokia N8'

If you're steeped in the Lumia 950 XL or similar, on Windows 10 Mobile, or perhaps the Nokia 808 on Symbian (this being cross-posted to AAS), then it's worth noting that I've been doing a LOT of testing of the new Samsung Galaxy S9. Almost uniquely in the Android flagship world, it has the full set of features (OS excepted!) that you might be looking for. So world class camera (and video camera), high quality DAC and 3.5mm headphone output, loud stereo speakers, expandable storage, and more. 

Anyway, the chances are that you've already jumped from Symbian to something else (maybe Windows?) or perhaps you're a hardened Lumia 950 or 930 user and are eyeing up where you could possibly go next, in the absence of any official Microsoft hardware (at least so far in 2018)? The Galaxy S9 is brand new and certainly has my attention.

So I've been reviewing and testing it. You'll have seen my side by side comparison with the 950 XL and the camera shootout? There's also now my video review, embedded below. Just click through to YouTube or maximise in place (depending on your browser) to see it in 1080p for best effect.

So pretty impressive. One thing I didn't test in the review above was video capture and microphone quality, so that's next, here. My 12 string guitar at point blank range is pretty darned loud. I've included some familiar devices in the test below, in this updated compilation. So put on headphones for this one and crank up the volume!

Very good indeed. For those interested, it looks like the S9 might be able to finally replace my old Nokia 808 as the phone that shoots my Phones Show video podcast, since it has volume, quality and (the weak point on the Lumias) a low noise floor.

Sometimes you can't always get what you want, but.... you might just get what you need. So sang The Rolling Stones and a bit of a life lesson, but borne out by several technological trends, not least something that had been close to my heart, the subject of replaceable batteries in smartphones. See below for links, quotes, and current thoughts on the reality.

The concept is sound enough, of course - let the user swap out a phone battery that has lost capacity. Or perhaps keep a spare in the car glove box for swapping in the event of an emergency. Yet, across the board, replaceable batteries have died out, causing me to wonder what went wrong, in the face of seemingly equal pros and cons...

Quoting from my editorial 'Sealed vs user-replaceable batteries: is your phone battery doomed?' back in 2012 (and you'll note the article's age from the phone models mentioned!!), and highlighting the pane which needs expanding in green, for clarity:

[End of quote]

I returned to this theme a number of times, most recently in 2015, in 'Does 'replaceable' matter in practice? A horrendously wasted opportunity...', which is a forerunner to today's ramblings.

The thing is that I was absolutely right in my analysis - all the factors, the pros and cons, above, are still true and still relevant. Yet almost every smartphone produced in 2018 has a sealed battery. What happened?

Looking at the three 'pros' for sealed batteries above, the first two are to do with design and robustness, and the trend to thinner, metal or glass unibody designs is inescapable, certainly above the budget phone price tier. Having a sealed battery is therefore a good thing and avoids having to compromise design or materials to accommodate a battery bay or release mechanism. But, looking at the table above, I still think that the arguments in favour of replaceable batteries match the design considerations. Not least to avoid the situation where a sealed phone like the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 starts catching fire all over the world because the internal battery was under too much mechanical pressure.

However, it's the third 'pro' for sealed batteries which was the clincher. The Note 7 aside, it's turned out to be far, far safer to have the phone's battery 100% under the manufacturer's control. In an ideal world, every phone would have a replaceable battery, these would be in a range of standard sizes (as with AA, AAA batteries, etc.), and you'd be able to pick them up with well known branding from any electronics outlet in any country. The reality has been very different though - even when smartphones generally had replaceable batteries, the cells were largely all different in size and shape and so no design or manufacturer ever reached economies of scale.

Which means that original batteries are expensive, which means that there's a market for cheaper, 'clone' cells, with much lower prices but also much lower quality and subsequent disappointing performance. And, no doubt, a poorer safety record when being charged.

Yet users, when faced with buying a £30 original battery or a £10 'clone', will usually vote with their wallets. Meaning:

• that their phone's battery life gets even worse, contrary to why they bought the replacement in the first place
• a very definite risk of fire when charging
• manufacturers see poor sales of replacement original batteries, so they wind down (or, in some cases, never start) production

It's all a bit of a vicious circle. Which of us hasn't bought a 'cheap' battery in the last decade, and been disappointed? Which of us hasn't bought a 'clone' ink cartridge for our home printer, only to find that printing isn't as good (surprise, surprise) as with the manufacturer's originals?

So we, the users, are ultimately to blame for the demise of replaceable batteries in smartphones. Manufacturers can't trust us to pay a sensible and appropriate price for what is the most crucial (and - literally - explosive) component in their phones.

In reality, even when devices like the Nokia 808 or Lumia 950 had a removeable back and therefore a battery bay, buying spare batteries was almost impossible. For example, in the last five years I've had hundreds of emails from people asking me where they can buy a spare BV-4D cell for a Nokia 808 PureView. And the short answer is that Nokia only really ever made enough for the phones they made and for repair centres. Ditto the (also classic) Lumia 950 - I'm not convinced that any batteries were made explicitly for retail.

With such lack of commitment from manufacturers, it's not surprising that sales of batteries were near zero, so a classic 'chicken or egg' situation.

In practice, most of us now live with phones with sealed batteries - and we manage. Li-Ion technology has improved and, if you look after your phone and don't keep running the battery down near zero then you can expect two or three years of decent life from it. After which, with useable capacity at (say) 70%, it's probably time to pass the phone 'down the chain' anyway, to a family member or a second hand shop, wherein the device has a new life in the hands of someone with lower budget but also lower expectations.

Yes, standard-sized, replaceable, recycleable batteries still make more sense in terms of ecology, but for all the reasons above we've ended up in a diametrically opposite world. And we manage. 

Comments welcome. 

The cornerstone of the PureView camera in the Nokia 808 (and, later, 1020) was a way to zoom in without needing a physical mechanism. Hence the idea of smart cropping into a massive 41MP pixel array. And, after a gap of five years or so (and two operating systems later, arguably), we finally have another smartphone which looks to use a similar system. Allegedly, according to GSM Arena. Smart rumours point to the upcoming (only weeks away) Huawei P20 Pro having 'a 40MP sensor, plus 5x "hybrid zoom"'. 

Back in the day (2012), the Nokia 808 PureView had to manage with a custom ISP that did all the hard work of oversampling and real time zooming, with great performance, while the Lumia 1020 added OIS to proceedings but lost out in terms of speed, using the main Snapdragon S4 chipset to do the computations needed. The computing power (processor/GPU) in 2018 would have been unimaginable five years ago, but we've now reached the stage where three cameras can be used at the same time, one of which is a 40MP sensor, as per the quote below, and with the immense computing power handling the merging and interpolating needed.

As a result, the (up to) 3x zoom possible on the 808 and 1020 (depending on settings and set-up) may now be upped to 5x, thanks to fancy computational means. And all without needing a physically huge/deep camera unit. If Huawei pulls this off then the pixel size will be even smaller than that on the Lumia 1020, but sensors have improved so much and there's so much power available these days for image noise reduction, that it really shouldn't matter.

From the news article:

The triple camera has been the cornerstone of the Huawei P20 Pro marketing campaign, but concrete details have been scarce. The new camera, co-developed with Leica, may pack a 40MP sensor, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the PureView days. Here’s the breakdown.

The 40MP sensor will serve as the primary camera. Next to it is an 8MP telephoto camera with “hybrid zoom”. According to unconfirmed info this cam will provide 3x optical zoom, which along with info from the 40MP sensor will help achieve high-quality 5x magnification.

The third sensor will have 20MP resolution and will likely shoot in black and white as well as assist with bokeh effects. The triple camera will be assisted by Laser AF and an IR-RGB sensor. As for the slow-mo videos, the P20 will reportedly shoot 960fps at 720p (same as the Galaxy S9 phones).

Whatever next? Three cameras, OIS, massive processing power, laser autofocus, the Nokia pair now look somewhat 'simple' by comparison! They still compete, mind you, even in 2018, and I'm looking forward to pitching the Lumia 1020 in particular against an (alleged) new triple camera Huawei to see if the modern zoom implementation can match 'old faithful'!

AAS and AAWP readers will prize the Nokia 808 PureView and Lumia 1020 highly - I already reported on the imminent launch of another super-sensored camera phone champion, from Huawei. And it's here, and shortly in for review and comparisons too. Some official details and quotes below.

The P20 Pro was covered across the web, but from Gavin's Gadgets:

• The rear cameras feature a co-engineered Leica Triple Camera New AI-assisted camera system. The 3 lenses are as follows. A 40mp RGB sensor. a 20mp monochrome sensor and a 8mp zoom sensor. The P20 Pro can do 3 x optical zoom and up to 5 x lossless zoom.
• The front camera is 24mp.
• A huge 4,000mAh battery.
• 6gb ram & 128gb storage
• 6.1 inch full vision OLED display.
• Bluetooth codecs APTX, APTX HD , LDAC , HWA

DxOMark's tests aren't 100% real world, but they're a benchmark at least. I won't dignify them by quoting them, but their site does give some tech details on the main sensor:

However, Huawei hasn’t simply slapped a third sensor and lens onto its current dual-camera system. The new model stands out among its peers in several ways:

1. At 1/1.78″, the main camera’s sensor is unusually large—approximately twice the size of the Samsung Galaxy S9’s 1/2.55″ chip. Despite a slightly slower f/1.8-aperture lens, the RGB main camera sensor of the  P20 Pro captures approximately 20 percent more light than the smaller sensors used in most competing models. This sensor is also helped by the B&W sensor which also catches a lot of photons.
2. The main camera sensor uses a Quad Bayer structure with a total pixel count of 40Mp. It outputs data binned in 2 × 2 pixel units, resulting in 10Mp image output.
3. With an equivalent focal length of 80mm, the P20 Pro’s optically-stabilized tele-camera offers a significantly longer reach than the 2x tele-modules in the latest iPhone or Samsung Galaxy devices. This is possible because the main camera in combination with the 20Mp monochrome secondary sensor is already capable of delivering decent zoom detail at a 2x zoom factor. As a consequence, the engineers have been able to focus on squeezing a longer reach out of the P20 Pro’s tele-lens. The Tele also outputs 10Mp image.

Notably, the Lumia 1020 and Nokia 808 didn't just 'pixel bin' - they used a sophisticated oversampling algorithm. But it's also possible that this does too and that DxOMark are simplifying the P20 Pro's imaging workflow.

In terms of stats and areas, the 1/1.78" (optical format) sensor seems huge by modern standards, but it's still small compared to the Lumia 1020's 1/1.5" and tiny compared to the Nokia 808's 1/1.2" sensors. Though, of course, sensor technology has come a long way since then - it's not all about physics, for once.

In terms of zooming, back in my initial story, I said:

The cornerstone of the PureView camera in the Nokia 808 (and, later, 1020) was a way to zoom in without needing a physical mechanism. Hence the idea of smart cropping into a massive 41MP pixel array. And, after a gap of five years or so (and two operating systems later, arguably), we finally have another smartphone which looks to use a similar system...

Back in the day (2012), the Nokia 808 PureView had to manage with a custom ISP that did all the hard work of oversampling and real time zooming, with great performance, while the Lumia 1020 added OIS to proceedings but lost out in terms of speed, using the main Snapdragon S4 chipset to do the computations needed. The computing power (processor/GPU) in 2018 would have been unimaginable five years ago, but we've now reached the stage where three cameras can be used at the same time, one of which is a 40MP sensor, as per the quote below, and with the immense computing power handling the merging and interpolating needed.

As a result, the (up to) 3x zoom possible on the 808 and 1020 (depending on settings and set-up) may now be upped to 5x, thanks to fancy computational means. And all without needing a physically huge/deep camera unit. If Huawei pulls this off then the pixel size will be even smaller than that on the Lumia 1020, but sensors have improved so much and there's so much power available these days for image noise reduction, that it really shouldn't matter.

Three cameras, OIS, massive processing power, laser autofocus, the Nokia pair now look somewhat 'simple' by comparison! They still compete, mind you, even in 2018, and I'm looking forward to pitching the Lumia 1020 in particular against the new triple camera Huawei to see if the modern zoom implementation can match 'old faithful'!

My gut feel is that it can, thanks to the chipsets used, though it's a testament to the 808 and 1020 that it's taken over half a decade for the two devices to be overtaken in the PureView department.

Zoom is one of the few really diffentiating factors in phone imaging these days, with 'simple' photo taking now being mastered in almost all light conditions. However, no sooner do I mention a telephoto zoom lens in a smartphone, such as the iPhone X or (here) the Galaxy S9+, than people pipe up with requests for comparisons to 'zoom champions' of the past. I maintain that, classy though these might have been, there's an element of rose-tinted memories creeping in. But let's find out, with some examples of camera phone zoom under a wide variety of situations and use cases. 

As you can tell from my introduction, I'm trying to downplay expectations for the classics of times past. 2012 for the Nokia 808 PureView and 2013 for the Lumia 1020 are both half a decade away and tremendous progress has been made across the board since then in terms of sensor technology and, especially, in image processing. 

Mind you, while newer is often better, the fact that it's taken that half decade for the Nokia classics to really get out-classed is testament to their class.

I'm also going to throw in a third classic, from 2014 and running Android, the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom, which features a genuine 10x optical zoom in the body of a phone - it's a stunning device that I really wish hadn't proved so unreliable and therefore dropped by Samsung in terms of development. Maybe such a large mechanical zoom really is a bad idea in a phone, which typically gets 100x the use of a standalone camera in terms of punishment and wear and tear?

Meaning that of the four phone cameras tested here for their zoom capabilities, three of them are 100% irrelevant in terms of a 2018 buying decision! But the demand for a comparison is still there, as you'll have read in numerous article comments, so here goes...

The methodology here was somewhat fluid, not least because of the differences in output resolution and zoom capability, but the idea in each test case was to get maximum detail and clarity on the chosen subject.

Why zoom in the first place? Usually because the subject can't be approached closely enough. For example, when you can't physically get close enough to a subject, usually at an event or attraction, with people or barriers in the way. Or perhaps something's up high? Or simply far away and you want a tighter cropped scene with the subject larger? Or perhaps you're shooting people and you could move closer, but then you'd intrude on the moment, so shooting from further away gives you fuller resolution with a tighter field of view.

But on with the tests. Because I'm comparing zoomed output from no less than four different smartphone cameras, I've adopted a grid of 1:1 crops approach, making it easy to compare the same subject detail from all four at the same time. Again, I can't emphasise enough that only one of the three phone cameras here is 'current' and that, in particular, the Samsung K Zoom is only here to show what a 'real' zoom can do.

As detailed in my guide to PureView zoom, the Nokia 808 and Lumia 1020 both zoom to around 2.5x in their default 5MP mode, while the S9+ zooms to 2x in good light using its telephoto lens, though at 9MP, which shouldn't be too far off what the Nokia units produce in terms of resolution. In low light, the Nokia pair maintain their lossless zoom, though the quality loss from not having oversampling is then more obvious.

The joker in the pack is the ultra-niche part-phone, part-camera K Zoom, which obviously goes up to 10x zoom even at its full 16MP resolution. And in most cases below I use it. Gulp. But don't take this data point too seriously - what most of you are interested in is how the S9+ zoom compares to the Nokia zoom champions of old!

Test 1: The Island

A good example of a subject which can't be approached for a closer shot. This little island is in the middle of my local park pond. Here's the overall (unzoomed, to give you a sense of the zooming and cropping used) scene:

You can grab the original test images from the Nokia 808, Nokia Lumia 1020, Samsung Galaxy S9+ and Galaxy K Zoom here, if you want to download them and do your own analysis.

And here are the promised detailed 1:1 crops from the zoomed shots, in sequence from 5MP at 2.5x zoom for the two Nokias (the top row), to 9MP at 2x zoom for the Galaxy S9+ and 10x for the K Zoom (the bottom row):

The first three crops are very comparable but serve as something of a lesson in how to do sharpening in a phone's image processing stack. The Nokia 808's rendition is super natural and probably 'purest', but the 1020 adds a tiny bit more detail (thanks to the newer sensor and - possibly - OIS), plus it also adds a little processing to the mix. The end result is my favourite in terms of the balance of detail and atmosphere. The S9+ produces similar detail, even in the much thinner form factor, thanks to the extra telephoto lens, but Samsung's processing goes too far, in my opinion, at least for natural detail like this - everything's too jagged, too artificial.

The now-ancient K Zoom, included here to show what a 'real' zoom can do, is of course in a different league. In good light, this is simply amazing. And remember, the K Zoom is/was still a full Android smartphone and no thicker than the Nokia 808. Interesting, anyway!

Test 2: The Duck(!)

Now, let's try a living subject that can't be approached closely. Enter a handily placed duck! Here's the overall (unzoomed) scene:

You can grab the original test images from the Nokia 808, Nokia Lumia 1020, Samsung Galaxy S9+ and Galaxy K Zoom here, if you want to download them and do your own analysis.

And here are the promised detailed 1:1 crops from the zoomed shots, in sequence from 5MP at 2.5x zoom for the two Nokias (the top row), to 9MP at 2x zoom for the Galaxy S9+ and 10x for the K Zoom (the bottom row):

Again we see the progression in image processing. The effective maximum zoom is similar in each of the first three photos, but with the 808 super natural, the 1020 adding extra clarity and some sharpening, and the S9+ going all out for sharp edges, at the expense of (in this case) water not looking like water anymore.

Test 3: Daffodil

Staying with nature, but this time wanting some sharp edges and clarity. These daffodils are a good close-up example snap - I couldn't get really close and at the right angle without trampling flowers, so zoom was really helpful. Here's the overall unzoomed scene:

You can grab the original test images from the Nokia 808, Nokia Lumia 1020, Samsung Galaxy S9+ and Galaxy K Zoom here, if you want to download them and do your own analysis.

And here are the promised detailed 1:1 crops from the zoomed shots, in sequence from 5MP at 2.5x zoom for the two Nokias (the top row), to 9MP at 2x zoom for the Galaxy S9+ and 10x for the K Zoom (the bottom row):

The Samsung love of sharpening comes in handier here, with the petal edges and flower detail being defined better, though the two Nokias did a pretty good job too. The Lumia 1020 maade something of a mess of exposure on my first try, in auto, and I could see that exposure was a touch too high, so I cheated slightly and knocked this down by 0.7 in the Pro mode. And, viewing the crops here, I wish I'd done something similar for the 808 and the S9+: the 808 also needs a trip into 'Creative' mode for this, while the S9+ has an onscreen exposure slider that appears for a few seconds after tapping to set auto-exposure and focus.

A win for the S9+ then here, though the K Zoom's optical zoom produces insane zoomed detail - you owe it to yourself to grab the full version, as it's a good example of where a useable phone camera zoom can produce stunningly intimate results.

Test 4: The Lady

[The first topless lady on the All About sites? Shock!]

I wanted to show how zooming can produce a closer - again more intimate - photo of a person, without invading their personal space quite so much. But no one around me wanted to pose for the feature, so I turned to stone. At least making sure that the subject didn't move during capture! Interestingly, the bright sky was behind the statue, meaning that I couldn't then resist using fill-in Xenon flash on the Nokia 808, 1020 and the Samsung K Zoom - just because I could - at the same time as using zoom. Anyway, here's the overall unzoomed scene:

You can grab the original test images from the Nokia 808, Nokia Lumia 1020, Samsung Galaxy S9+ and Galaxy K Zoom here, if you want to download them and do your own analysis.

And here are the promised detailed 1:1 crops from the zoomed shots, in sequence from 5MP at 2.5x zoom for the two Nokias (the top row), to 9MP at 2x zoom for the Galaxy S9+ and 4x for the K Zoom (the bottom row):

Again, bear in mind that I was using fill-in flash here, which is why they all came out pretty well despite the face being almost in silhouette, technically. I only went to 4x zoom on the K Zoom because 10x would have been stupid at this range. In fact, even fill-in flash from the K Zoom's extra large Xenon unit was overkill and the photo was a bit over-white as a result. Of the three main contenders here, I'm happiest with the Lumia 1020's result in terms of detail and colour, while the 808's didn't quite get the lighting and dynamics right, and the S9+ had to do everything with available light, having no Xenon to fill-in.

Test 5: Indoor detail

Inside my local church, there's good lighting, but still way below what's available outside. Here's the overall unzoomed scene:

You can grab the original test images from the Nokia 808, Nokia Lumia 1020, Samsung Galaxy S9+ and Galaxy K Zoom here, if you want to download them and do your own analysis.

And here are the promised detailed 1:1 crops from the zoomed shots, in sequence from 5MP at 2.5x zoom for the two Nokias (the top row), to 9MP at 2x zoom for the Galaxy S9+ and 10x for the K Zoom (the bottom row):

Now here's where things get interesting, in that we start dealing with software more. The Galaxy S9+ telephoto camera can't be used when indoors or in low light - which is to say that it still works, but the limited aperture makes it as noisy as, well, the Nokia 808's zoomed shot. So the S9+ switches to its large aperture (f/1.5) lens and does interpolative zoom, i.e. making up the detail between actual data points - and doing it rather well. Looking at the 808's and S9+'s crops above, the 808 has more real detail but the S9+'s shot somehow looks clearer. While the Lumia 1020's photo is better again, thanks to the OIS keeping the zoom crystal steady throughout the exposure. And the K Zoom's result is massively zoomed - and steady - but also noisy due to the small aperture forced by the optical zoom mechanism.

Test 6: Night time

My standard night time test. Zooming at night means no PureView oversampling to help on the two Nokias, so this might get ugly. And it means no telephoto lens on the S9+, so it's interpolative zoom again on the f/1.5 lens. While even the mighty K Zoom struggles when you zoom in, thanks to the tiny amount of light then being let in. So I limited this to 2x, matching the others. Here's the overall unzoomed scene:

You can grab the original test images from the Nokia 808, Nokia Lumia 1020, Samsung Galaxy S9+ and Galaxy K Zoom here, if you want to download them and do your own analysis.

And here are the promised detailed 1:1 crops from the zoomed shots, in sequence from 5MP at 2.5x zoom for the two Nokias (the top row), to 9MP at 2x zoom for the Galaxy S9+ and (here) also 2x for the K Zoom (the bottom row):

It's not often that a phone camera beats the PureView pair in my night tests, but just look at what that f/1.5 lens pulls out on the S9+ above. With, in theory, only half the resolution to work with, too. A combination of more light and intelligent zoom algorithms. Meanwhile, the Nokia 808 PureView's shot is surprisingly crisp considering that it doesn't have OIS and I wasn't using a tripod for its 1/8s exposure. The Lumia 1020 goes up to 1/3s with its ball-bearing OIS, but there's still not really enough light getting in. And the K Zoom falls down again due to the small aperture in the mechanical zoom lens.

Conclusions

You'll notice that I haven't ascribed scores as I've gone along, for once. Three of these smartphones are now obsolete, so it's not so much a competition as a set of data points. My conclusions:

• The K Zoom's mechanical 10x zoom lens is incredible in all but bad light - and shows that this would have been a viable way to go. But the phone market moves to thinner and thinner form factors, plus dust had a habit of getting into the zoom lens mechanism, so the design wasn't that reliable.
• The Nokia 808 PureView still produces wonderful 'natural' images in most light conditions, free of artefacts and ready for post processing.
• The new Galaxy S9+'s photos and 2x zoom produce excellent results across the board, but Samsung has GOT to dial down its image sharpening in future updates.
• The Lumia 1020 is probably my favourite overall from this feature, with consistently good balance of actual and sharpened detail, allied to genuinely lossless zoom. And, hey the 1020 can still be used as a phone today, with 2018 service, with only a few caveats. I'm just saying...

PS. Of course, the Huawei P20 Pro, announced recently, is another modern contender, using some PureView elements (thanks to input from ex-Nokian Eero Salmelin) to create a hybrid 5x zoom - I'll report back when I have this in for review.

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 Apple iPhone 8 Plus. Worth a watch as he goes into some detail, comparing shots like for like.

Over on AAWP, I've been doing detailed shootouts between the Huawei P20 Pro, with its 40MP sensor and under the guidance of one of the original Pureiew co-creators, Eero Salmelin, and the Lumia 1020, but over and over again I've had requests to pitch the P20 Pro against the Nokia 808, the original PureView camera phone. Can the 2012 imaging tech match that from 2018? Let's find out.

As detailed in my various AAWP pieces, the P20 Pro not only has a main 40MP sensor, but also a supplementary 3x telephoto lens and a 20MP monochrome sensor. The upshot should be masses of imaging data and great images massaged out of it all by the powerful 2018 chipset. However, as you may have seen, the P20 Pro also introduces heavy handed noise reduction and sharpening that can result in ugly artefacts.

Given that the whole point of computational photography to improve purity and detail is so that you don't need to do noise reduction or sharpening, it all seems a little ironic. Anyway, on with the tests.

Notes:

• I was using the Nokia 808 in its 'Creative' mode at 8MP oversampled, to better match the 7MP/10MP of the various P20 Pro shots. I also set the JPG compression at 'Superfine', which is my normal 808 default. Everything else was left alone.
• This set of tests isn't quite as wide as usual because time and writing resources are scarce for AAS in 2018, but at least you have some data points below. Better than nothing! 

Test 1: Sunny snap

Some sunlit branches against a blue sky. Here's the full scene, as shot by the Nokia 808:

And here are 1:1 crops, 808 then P20 Pro. If you want the original JPGs then they're here, for your analysis, from the Nokia 808 and Huawei P20 Pro.

I'm not sure that comment is even needed here - the brutal and unnecessary processing from the 2018 P20 Pro is there in the images for all to see. First glance and the P20 image looks sharper, then you look closely and see that it's 100% artificial. The Nokia 808's image looks like it's the view through a window, i.e. it's real. While the P20 Pro's image looks enhanced and artificial.

Nokia 808 PureView: 10 pts, Huawei P20 Pro: 8 pts

Test 2: Sunny snap, zoomed

The same scene, but this time using the 3x zoom on both camera phones. Here are 1:1 crops, 808 then P20 Pro. If you want the original JPGs then they're here, for your analysis, from the Nokia 808 and Huawei P20 Pro.

Yes, yes, I know that the zoom isn't 3x for the Nokia 808 in its 8MP mode - it's more like 2x, but the test is still valid. Unsurprisingly, with plenty of light and a genuine telephoto lens, the P20 Pro does much better here. There's still the slightly over-processed air, but on the other hand there's more resolved detail, so I'm scoring this one even.

Nokia 808 PureView: 9 pts, Huawei P20 Pro: 9 pts

Test 3: Low light

A static plane just after sunset, with light levels low - it was quite a bit darker to my eyes than the photos make it seem! Here's the full scene, as shot by the Nokia 808:

And here are 1:1 crops, 808 then P20 Pro. If you want the original JPGs then they're here, for your analysis, from the Nokia 808 and Huawei P20 Pro.

Interestingly, I managed a crisp-ish shot, even at 1/30s on the Nokia 808 - remember, it predated OIS in phones. I was bracing it against my car, which I'm sure helped, but didn't feel the need for anything fancy, like a tripod. The P20 Pro claims 'AI' stabilisation, plus it has multiple cameras and multiple exposures, yet its photo still isn't in the same class as the Nokia 808's. See what you think above. Yet again the processing produces an artificial effect - some have dubbed this 'water colour painting' and for a photo I find it quite ugly.

Nokia 808 PureView: 9 pts, Huawei P20 Pro: 7 pts

Test 4: Night time

Really trying to see what 'PureView' capabilities each phone camera has, I then shot in darker conditions still (again darker than the shots make out and with the sun well below the horizon) and with some bright detail in a shaded alcove to try to confuse things. Here's the full scene, as shot by the Nokia 808:

And here are 1:1 crops, 808 then P20 Pro. Note that I experimented here with the usually superior Night Mode on the P20 Pro, which builds up an image over multiple seconds and exposures. If you want the original JPGs then they're here, for your analysis, from the Nokia 808 and Huawei P20 Pro.

The original PureView processing seems superior to me, more natural. Partly this is the full RGB 40MP sensor with a traditional Bayer layout and the Nokia oversampling algorithms, while the P20 Pro has a quad-Bayer block pattern, which I feel is more primitive in terms of resolving finer colour detail. And partly this is down, yet again, to clumsy noise reduction and sharpening from Huawei - Eero, if you're reading this, you DON'T NEED these extra stages, you already have great optics, just spit out the images and encode them to JPG as they are!!

Either way, look at the trolleys, look at the Maltesers advert (other brands are available!), look at the detail in the cash machine, the 2012 phone's camera's output - despite the lack of OIS - is superior.

Nokia 808 PureView: 9 pts, Huawei P20 Pro: 8 pts

Verdict

This has only been a short feature, but hey, new content on AAS in 2018...! In particular, I forgot to shoot a 'party' test, but I think we can assume that this will be the usual Xenon walkover for the Nokia 808. And the 808 is already way ahead:

1. Nokia 808 PureView: 37/40 pts
2. Huawei P20 Pro: 32/40 pts

What I find fascinating here is that other sites have proved that shooting DNG (RAW) images on the P20 Pro means side-stepping all the extra ugly processing, proving that the triple camera system on the P20 Pro is basically sound. It's the software that ruins the images for consumers and, as usual, it's all about updates coming along in time.

In the meantime, this quick feature has shown, I hope, that - for now - the original PureView classic camera phone still produces superior images.*

* and, unlike the Lumia 1020, you can't point to it being too slow, since the 808 oversamples with a custom ISP and is only a fraction of a second from shot to shot.

Sony just announced a sensor that takes us all right back to the halcyon days of the Nokia 808 PureView and the Lumia 1020 - this has 48 Megapixels and allows for lossless digital zoom, especially in video mode. It's a component that will let mainstream Android (and possibly iOS) smartphones achieve Nokia PureView-like functionality over the next few years.

I say 'PureView-like' because the tech here isn't quite as sophisticated. A quad-Bayer filter sacrifices daytime precise detail for better low light performance, and the implementation of lossless zoom in both still and video mode will be down to the individual manufacturers using this in their phones in 2019.

In other words, the Nokia 808 and Lumia 1020 remain the PureView kings in terms of implementation, whatever their other limitations. And don't forget the recent Huawei P20 Pro, which also used a quad-Bayer sensor. It seems that Nokia's original vision of a high resolution sensor to provide more information for imaging software to chew on is coming full circle and that modern handsets might work on similar, if not identical, lines.

It's also worth noting that modern chipsets are so fast that they can double up, with oversampling or pixel binning from this Sony sensor and multiple exposure combination, producing computational images that are super-pure. In theory!

From the Sony press release:

Sony Corporation today announced the upcoming release of the IMX586 stacked CMOS image sensor for smartphone cameras. The new sensor features 48 effective megapixels, the industry’s highest pixel count. The new product achieved a world-first ultra-compact pixel size of 0.8 μm, making it possible to pack 48 effective megapixels onto a 1/2"-type (8.0mm diagonal) unit, thereby supporting enhanced imaging on smartphone cameras.

...The new sensor uses the Quad Bayer color filter array, where adjacent 2x2 pixels come in the same color, making high-sensitivity shooting possible. During low light shooting, the signals from the four adjacent pixels are added, raising the sensitivity to a level equivalent to that of 1.6 μm pixels (12 megapixels), resulting in bright, low noise images.
In addition to these advantages, original Sony exposure control technology and signal processing functionality are built into the image sensor, enabling real-time output and a superior dynamic range four times greater than conventional units. Even scenes with both bright and dark areas can be captured with minimal highlight blowout or loss of detail in shadows.

By adopting the Quad Bayer color filter array, where the adjacent 2x2 pixels come in the same color, the new sensor delivers both high sensitivity and high resolution. In low light situations, such as shooting at night, the signal from the four adjacent pixels are added, raising the sensitivity to a level equivalent to that of 1.6 μm pixels (12 effective megapixels), to capture bright, low-noise photos and videos. When shooting bright scenes such as daytime outdoors, the built-in, original signal processing function performs array conversion, making it possible to obtain high-definition 48 effective megapixel images in real time.

Pixel array of the new sensor
(Quad Bayer Array)
(conceptual diagram)

Array conversion using original signal processing
(conceptual diagram)

With no one actually wanting 48MP images, it will be interesting to see what manufacturers decide to do - I'd have though that outputting 12MP 'purer' photos was vastly preferable to giant 48MP, 20MB images. But we'll see. And what will camera software coders do in terms of achieving PureView digital zoom, for stills and video? We just don't know. Hopefully they'll do something along the lines of what Nokia did in 2011, but maybe there are still patents in place blocking copycats?

As is traditional, I save this sort of accessory review for Friday. Bluetooth speakers are very common and commoditised by now, of course, but I chose this one to review because it has a single unique selling point. It has a carrying handle. Don't laugh - it makes a huge difference and is immediately likeable - every other speaker has to be held in a vice-like grip or cradled somehow. The DA150 here can be hooked around a finger while you carry other things, to the beach, to the garden, whatever. Read on...

I can't emphasise enough that I get offered a Bluetooth speaker for review every single week through the year and only the very, very best make it to acceptance and then review. The DA150 isn't perfect, but it's so much fun to use - and so flexible as a music player. But I'll come to that in a moment.

(All my smartphone testing with this 'dodocool' accessory was with a Windows 10 Mobile handset, the Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro, by the way.)

Essentially this is a twin-coned speaker with decent bass reflex and tough cloth weave over front and back. It looks and feels great and the DA150 feels very solid in the hand. It's probably all plastic under the hood, but the materials are very well chosen. The outer edges are all rubberised for extra grip and there's one of those 'stick to anything' grippy pads on the bottom, ensuring that it doesn't slide off smooth surfaces when playing music.

Plus it has a handle! This clips on and is replaceable, should it ever break or wear out. It seems to be made of neoprene or similar and is smooth on the top and pitted underneath, for maximum grip again.

The main reason why dodocool has gone all 'cloth' here and not worried about waterproofing is that the back panel has so many ports, it would be tough to make them all water-tight. So you get maximum flexibility but zero waterproofing. Nothing's directly exposed in a dangerous way, but I'd try not to let this get caught in anything more than a light shower of rain. Still, it's so inexpensive (£25) that a water catastrophe wouldn't hurt too much. Different from when you have a £100 speaker!

The back ports are, clockwise from top left:

• USB Type A (e.g. for a memory stick/flash drive, but also for any other mountable storage)
• Aux/3.5mm input, though no cable is provided - you'll have to raid your drawers for your own!
• Power on/off. When turned on, it automatically connects to or starts playing from the last source.
• microUSB (charging only, and yes, a cable is provided)
• microSD/TransFlash card slot 

In other words, you can play music from your phone over Bluetooth, via whatever's driving a 3.5mm lead, or from memory card storage, though note that the latter options just play the tracks on your storage in order - there's no control other than to skip forward and back (using the + and - controls).

Staying with Bluetooth, in this case from a Windows 10 Mobile phone, volume control is multiplexed across the phone's media volume out and the speaker's own volume setting. In other words, for maximum volume, both have to be right up - one does not control the other. This is an important distinction, but you get used to it quickly. You also have to get used to volume up and down being a long press on the + and - keys, with the single press skipping tracks. As you might expect, the centre circle multi-function button pauses and plays, plus it answers voice calls if one should come in (there's a microphone included).

In use, the DA150 is really quite loud, with decent bass and treble, though not outstanding in either. This isn't the loudest and highest fidelity portable speaker you can buy (I'm tempted to plump for the AUKEY SK-S1 here), but for the price it's outstanding and... did I mention it HAS A HANDLE? 

No boring cuboid, this is rounded all over, has material to love, a superb handle to make this even more manageable, it's a hit with me. The promo material shows the dodocool DA150 playing music at a beach party and, while this is a great use case, it also works well in the garden in the summer. Or at least until the neighbours tell you to turn things down!!

One of THE most common requests I get, even though AAS isn't really being updated anymore, is for ways to grab offline maps for Nokia Maps on Symbian and S60 3rd Edition handsets. And, while I have some maps archived (i.e. as they were in 2012), I notice with interest that the Tienda SISstore team (who do a replacement on-device SIS store, a bit like the old AppList system) have launched Maps Now, a native downloader, or - easier - an online directory of world maps and resources. So just grab what you need and sideload it all to your old Symbian handset?

In theory, just grab everything you need from maps.tienda-sistore.com and sideload it into your /Cities folder on your phone's mass memory (typically). I haven't done this for a while, but if you're keen enough to be reading this news then you'll pounce on the files and be willing to experiment.

I did try the native Symbian maps downloader created by the Tienda team, but it got stuck on the Mediafile pages used to host the downloads. So perhaps doing the downloading via a protected desktop browser is the way to go. (As usual with Mediafire and similar download sites, make sure your malware protection is up to date and be careful what you click on!)

Hopefully the appearance of all these maps and resources will keep a few Symbian handsets going a little longer!

Note that the Tienda team's generic SIS 'store' app can be grabbed here, if you still want to go further and try out applications from the distant past that we all thought had gone for good. Just be careful, since platform protection features no longer work fully on Symbian.

My camera (phone) comparisons over the last few years have been gradually stymied by manufacturers choosing to over-sharpen, to edge enhance, and to reduce noise. All in the name of producing 'wow' images for social media. Yet, living in the UK, greenery - so trees and grass - and nature generally form part of many test scenes. And it's nature itself, with all its incredible textures, that proves hardest of all to capture using modern camera phones. By way of some data points, I investigate!

The divergence between what I expect camera phones to capture and what they end up producing does seem to be increasing in time. Eight years ago, we had the Nokia N8 (the first Symbian^3-running phone) and perhaps the pinnacle of phone cameras of its age, producing ultra-natural 12MP photos. Its shots were, allowing for lighting levels, essentially indistinguishable from what you saw with your eyes. No enhancements, no sharpening, no dramatic exposures for special effect. What you saw was what you got and, looking at the photos on a computer monitor, it was like looking out of a window onto the real world.

So grass looked like grass, leaves like leaves, trees like trees, and so on.

The 2012 Nokia 808 PureView continued in much the same vein, with noise-less 'PureView' results, albeit at reduced absolute resolution, thanks to the underlying 40MP sensor. But, elsewhere in the phone world, the rot was starting to set in. By the time the sister device, the Lumia 1020, running Windows Phone 8, appeared in 2013, it was starting to be accepted that users wanted more from their photos. Subjects had to be more colourful, more saturated, clearer, with sharper edges. 

And from there the likes of Samsung, Huawei and even (to a slightly lesser degree) Apple started cranking up the hyper-realistic aspects of images - everything exagerated, everything sharpened and edge enhanced so that it looked great on the phone screen and never mind whether the JPG was true to life or even useable later on, in terms of cropping it down.

The 2015 Lumia 950 and 950 XL straddled this gap, with image enhancement compared to the classic 'PureView' devices but with way less than the phone cameras of today, 2018. As I intend to show below with some suitable nature-based data points.

In this case, a corner of my garden, deliberately shot in overcast conditions so that sunlight contrast and shade didn't interfere with the comparison process. All the photos were taken from the same spot and, aside from the stated resolution notes, shot in full 'auto'.

Let's use our Famed Interactive Comparator (FIC). All 1:1 crops are at 900x500 for comparison, but see the links for full versions.

To set the deliberately overcast, deliberately greenery-heavy context, here is the garden corner as presented by the Lumia 950:

Pretty boring, eh? But also packed with natural detail in terms of leaves and grass. Even a few rocks, to add interest!

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, here's the central part of the scene above, at 1:1 in terms of image pixels, shot on the Nokia 808 PureView (in its 8MP mode) and the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Now, and i can't emphasise this enough, both phones have a large 40MP (or so) main sensor, so this should be a level playing field. In fact, it should be skewed massively in the Mate 20 Pro's favour because its sensor is six years newer, an eternity in technology.

However, scan the comparator across the two crops above and see what you think. If you think the Mate 20 Pro photo is 'better' then maybe this feature isn't for you. I agree that the sharpness anc contrast help the Mate 20 pro image leap off the page, but look at the images more closely and you'll see that the 808's image is far more 'natural', in that you can see every blade of grass, with no edge enhancement at all. Again I'll liken it to the Nokia 808 PureView's photo looking as if you're seeing a scene through an open window, while the Mate 20 Pro's photo is akin to a photocopy of the 808 original.

Of course, you'll be wondering about other phones that are relevant - or which I happen to have lying around. After all, the two examples above are perhaps at the opposite ends of the spectrum. So here's the Lumia 950 XL camera, paired with the Pixel 3 Camera app/algorithms (actually hosted on a Pixel 2 XL here, but the results should be the same). I'm expecting both to be in the middle of the aforementioned spectrum:

I'd say that on a scale of 100% natural (Nokia 808) to 0% natural (Mate 20 Pro), the Lumia 950 XL would sit at 50% (and spoilt by a little colour cast issue), with the Pixel 3 Camera at about 35%. What do you think? On this scale, I'd say that I'd be happy with anything above 30% in reality - I mean, the example here is very grass heavy and slightly skewed from the average camera phone subject.

As noted in my Lumia 950 XL vs Mate 20 Pro showdown here on AAWP and in my Phones Show Mate 20 Pro review, there IS a way to get the new 40MP-sensored Huawei to shoot natural photos. It's just fiddly and inefficient. You have to shoot in 'Pro' mode and also turn on the saving of RAW images (which take up to 80MB per photo, hence 'inefficient'). Note that you don't have to use the RAW files, you just have to turn on their creation, which triggers the Huawei software to not mess with the image data at all.

As proof, here are some more image pairs. First of all, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro's 'normal' crop against the exact same scene when RAW is toggled on in Settings:

A dramatic difference, I think you'll agree (at least, if you've been keeping up with me in the pixel-peeping stakes!) The un-enhanced output from the Mate 20 Pro's 40MP sensor (so it's been pixel-binned/over-sampled down to 10MP by the phone, but no extra processing has been performed) looks almost perfect to me, in terms of a natural scene.

The acid test? Putting this naturalistic output from the 'RAW-ed up' Mate 20 Pro up against the original gold standard, the Nokia 808 PureView, with which it shares significant heritage:

These shots are practically identical - in fact, the Mate 20 Pro's output is better, more in focus across the frame, with six years of camera phone tech development under its hood, so it's perhaps not surprising.

Enough pixel-peeped shots of grass and leaves though - my conclusion, and hopefully yours too, is that modern camera phone hardware is capable of dramatically better, more detailed, more natural results - it's just that almost all users never see it because companies like Huawei love to 'enhance' photos for better display on the phone screen and damn the actual purity of the images. So they edge-enhance, they sharpen, they reduce noise, they boost colours, they deliver HDR whether you like it or not, and so on.

A lot of people will glance at such 'enhanced' results and think them superior, but you and I know better. It's easy to take a natural image and do things with it - including cropping it down - and the details will always be there. You can't take a typical 'enhanced' JPG and crop it down, as you'll just see ugliness and the real detail will already have been lost.

I do feel a little like I'm crying into the wilderness here - almost every other reviewer of (e.g.) the Mate 20 Pro has said how wonderful its imaging results are. But your own eyes will tell you above that, at least, at the moment, the default output is anything but wonderful. My suggestion for Huawei (and ex-PureView co-creator Eero Salmelin) is that merely shooting in Pro mode should disable all the image enhancement. You shouldn't have to throw away 80MB per image just to get the higher quality JPG!

For those on AAS, you can reflect smugly that the last great Symbian smartphone is still the gold standard for real image quality, over half a decade later. For those on AAWP, note that the Lumia/Windows Camera algorithms are far, far, less aggressive than those on many competing phones. And, rolling in the high quality OIS for keeping shots crisp, the use of a BSI sensor, plus the PDAF, it's not surprising that, across all lighting use cases and subjects, the Lumia 950/XL has been my overall imaging gold standard since 2015.

Next up in the world of phone imaging, and of interest to Nokia/Lumia owners looking for a modern device with as much attention to image quality, are the new Google Pixel 3 devices - and, as you'll have seen above, the Pixel 3 Camera application is similar in terms of image quality to the Lumia 950 XL. So I have high hopes that, especially with the use of stock, un-bastardised Android, the Pixel 3 or Pixel 3 XL might be a very valid choice for anyone appreciating a good camera phone for 2019 and beyond.

Watch this space!

One of the reasons why there has always been a big debate as to what exactly constitutes "a smartphone" is that the definition itself keeps changing. Once we had dumb phones, then high end communicators and touchscreen multimedia gadgets for geeks, and then - by 2010 or so - enough people had what we had been calling 'smartphones' that they became mainstream and just 'phones'. But just what functions got added in each era, where are we now, and where do the different platforms stand?

I've divided smartphones (roughly) into four eras, as shown above. And, for each successive era, I've marked the new functions in red. These are the things that we've expected from our (smart)phones that weren't a requirement in the previous era. And you'll hopefully agree that it's striking how much more our phones are required to do now, in 2018, compared to the feature sets back in 2002.

Fourteen years ago, in 2002, simply being able to install an add-on application made a phone smart. It signified a 'proper' operating system (usually Symbian OS, Palm OS or Windows Mobile) and said application usually had to be copied across from a Windows PC with a proprietary cable. That was it. And there weren't that many third party applications to try out, certainly not when compared to the bulging application stores for iOS and Android today. 

In 2018, the graphic shows just how much a modern (smart)phone is required to handle - and these are all essentials for most of us. In fact, our phones are so much part of our life that the fear of losing them is greater than ever before - lessened (thankfully) by the way everything's also (usually) backed up or synced online, so a brand new phone could be substituted and it wouldn't take that long to get back up to speed.

This feature being hosted on AAS and AAWP, it's instructive to note where both platforms fade. Symbian OS was there at the dawn of smartphones (I was 'there' on day one in 1998 when Symbian was created. I had a phone call from one of the prime movers at Psion to explain - and to make sure that when I typed in the domain that I spelt the name right and didn't miss out the 'm' - cough!) and it dominated the first smartphone era above, with 60% market share for much of its life. It's fair to say that the launch of the finger touch-based iPhone/iOS and then Android in the second era gave Symbian a huge kick in the pants to evolve or die. It did evolve and embraced social media, navigation (in which it was a pioneer, thanks to Nokia), and even Store apps, but its time was drawing to an end as the third smartphone era dawned.

Era number three in my chart brought an increased focus on living online, with the likes of YouTube, Spotify, Netflix and so on, all being practical and expected. Symbian struggled with all of these, but AAWP readers will know that Windows Phone, Microsoft's re-invention of their mobile efforts, did rather better and largely kept up with the exponentially growing iOS and Android for a few years. The three functions listed in red above? Media streaming saw Windows Phone (and then Windows 10 Mobile) starting to struggle, with a 'spotty' Spotify client(!), a reliance on third party YouTube clients, a Netflix client that never worked as smoothly as on other platforms, and no practical way to watch Amazon Prime Video content at all. Remote Office worked pretty well, with virtual desktop solutions and Sharepoint, etc - this was one of the highlights of using Windows on phones, after all. But 'Online gaming', also quoted above, was extremely patchy on Windows and gamers usually had to make do with titles from a year or so back, if available at all.

And so to smartphone era number four. Symbian is a dot in the rear view mirror, Microsoft has pulled back from all Windows 10 Mobile development, and the extra 'phone as digital hub' functions that are now taken for granted just aren't possible under the two platforms. Developers flock to iOS and Android because of the sheer numbers of users and we've long since passed the point of no return in terms of any mobile platform other than the big two being commercially practical to develop for.

I wrote previously about 'moving goalposts' and this is still a fair analogy. It's not as if 'smartphone' was a fixed specification or target - the role keeps expanding, as shown in my infographic. I predict that era four will extend to 2020 and then we'll be looking at extra uses again. Perhaps augmented reality, genuinely proactive virtual assistants, 3D displays and holographic comms. Who knows?!