Nokia 8 Review – Back into Business

Nokia 8 Review Pakistan Tech Prolonged

Camera Features and Performance

Now that’s the part where HMD brought the olden and the golden partnership between two names Nokia and Carl ZEISS. Specially in the era when it’s not only them but many other players in the industry have joined hands with camera and optics experts – such as the most recent partnership between Huawei and Leica.

13 Megapixel Main Dual-Camera with ZEISS optics

When every other manufacturer is singing a dual-cam song, HMD Global just did that too. The dual-camera setup on Nokia 8 has two 13 megapixel sensors behind the ZEISS lenses. One of them is the color sensor and also equipped with an OIS (optical image stabilizer), while the other is the monochrome sensor that takes black & white shots to improve clarity and detail as well as reduces the color noise.

As the dual-camera configuration is not something that anyone will now be unfamiliar with. However understanding the difference between the configuration may set a target for a device what it is intended to do. A setup of a camera with a wide angle lens and a telephoto lens gives the capability of optical zoom into a phone camera.

Nokia 8 Review Camera

The other setup is a pair of two with one color sensor and the second monochrome sensor. This setup’s focus is to achieve better detail in most environments with even less noise than others. The later is the setup, Nokia 8 comes with. Both have been used for bokeh effect – to isolate background from the subject at the foreground.

Feature wise, Nokia 8 comes with 360° OZO surround sound – thanks to the three microphones used in video recording. If there is a real change in software, then it’s the camera app that Nokia put it differently than the original Google Camera app. It’s straight to the point, clean and user friendly, however we are still not happy with it. With a good camera hardware a flexible software for the camera is a must. The manual controls in the Nokia camera app are useless, just like we have seen in Nokia 6 and 5. So better stay with the auto camera and yes, that’s good in many many cases.

Daylight / Outdoor Shots

The camera indeed does well with the light available to it. The images have nice detail with much less noise in bright daylight. Sharpness is quite good but not that much good however the dynamic range is much better controlled. Closeup shots were really nice and cool to examine at 100% crops.

Nokia 8 Camera Samples in Daylight and Partical Daylight

Night and Low-light Shots

Ever heard that it’s the best light during the dawn and dusk in the day? If not then no issue, it’s not something to learn why here. Nokia 8 captured the most bits of the time and did its better to bring that light to phone in a better way. The noise is still appreciably low and the detail is impressive in that light.

Nokia 8 Camera Samples in Low-light and Night time

As there is no manual control over the camera exposure and ISO, the automatic configuration can take the exposure down to 1/11th at minimum. With the optical stabilization, it did better to keep the photos steady. There were occasions when the pictures come out to be shaky and blurry.

Monochrome Shots

Black & White shots were also good and those images actually tell that the secondary camera works in Nokia 8 to bring better detail in color photos.

Nokia 8 Camera Samples – Monochrome Samples

Bokeh Shots

As told above, the bokeh mode is a must feature that comes along with dual-camera. Some it portrait mode some aperture mode, but in result it’s the same thing that comes with a subject having a blurred background. One bad thing about it is that they come with visible noise. If you compare them with the the normal shots, you can easily tell the difference.

Nokia 8 Camera Samples – Bokeh samples

Panorama Shots

Front facing camera

Video Samples

Video quality is not that great if consider the detail as other flagship devices have reached a mark. Dynamic range is good just like still photos. On technical terms, the is only 30 frames per second support which ever resolution you choose. However the 4K support is available in addition to 1080p and 720p. With the interface, Nokia 8 gives you to choose the sound mechanism – front or rear mic or surround sound using all the mics.

Check the following short clips from Nokia 8.

Nokia 8 Camera – Video Sample 720p/30fps – Panning Handheld
Nokia 8 Camera – Video Sample 720p/30fps – Panning Tripod
Nokia 8 Camera – Video Sample 1080p/30fps Panning
Nokia 8 Camera – Video Sample 1080p/30fps Stabilizer Test Walk
Nokia 8 Camera – Video Sample 1080p/30fps Panning
Nokia 8 Camera – Video Sample 4K/30fps Panning