Flashbacks: the phones that revolutionized mobile cameras, part 1

28 February 2021
We look at the phones that were the first to reach important milestones in the history of mobile phone cameras.

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  • ?
  • Anonymous
  • LkB
  • 28 Feb 2021

React 2 Gadgets YT, 28 Feb 2021Reading this makes me appreciate : Huawei and the P20 Pro... more- galaxy gran prime has night mode, quality is poor but it has the function
- Asus used periscope years ago, real zoom with variable focal length
- XZ2 Premium night performance was much better than P20 Pro because of real time fusion for photos/videos using monochrome.
- huawei made ultra wide popular? LOL ....
- sony Z series can do bokeh with single camera

    First brand that made me interested in phone cameras was Sony Ericsson. Then came 4K samsung phone and 41mp lumia, though I'm not fan of video shooting, 4K was different experience than FHD in everything else. 41Mp hi res was like dslr for me, photos were just as good as you would expect from full size cameras.
    Later I was impressed with Sony cameras, meaning their sensor tech, not optics or sw. Even until now they lead in how true colors from shot feel.
    What however made big waves lately is Huawei as they push the limits be it in camera sensors, optics or sw. Huawei got the best pixel binning sw, the best edge to edge consistency and best low light performance overall and optical zoom records periodically.
    That to say, Sony's raw and manual mode on all fov's, even if it's opposed to needs of majority and le auto performance, is what all other phones cannot do even with all great he and sw inside.
    Last phone to impress me is galaxy S20/S20+, though not cool phone for many, surprisingly it got the best details be it stills or 8K, not even counting a raw option. We may have a 200mp+ cameras soon, but ability to capture true to life detail depends a lot on bayer and most of them got 1/4 or 1/9 of that galaxy phone.

      • ?
      • Anonymous
      • LkB
      • 28 Feb 2021

      808 uses downsampling. Not binning.
      Same trick that later was used by Sony Z series (20.7/23MP to 8).
      Otherwise, the 5MP photos would never have same amount of details of the 38MP ones.




        • ?
        • Anonymous
        • vGZ
        • 28 Feb 2021

        what happened to Mi CC and Redmi Note Pro series??

        and Mi Mix series??

          • ?
          • Anonymous
          • y6V
          • 28 Feb 2021

          and now the quad camera "king" is probably realme. 🤣🤣

            I remember people complaining or laughing about Nokia 808 Pure View. Because everything is supposed to be flat like a board and today they are adore about Samsung or iPhone with this lump on their back.
            Nokia wasn't a phone camera, it was still a phone but that camera was really great!
            This is unfortunately Nokia's last Symbian phone, the new CEO Elop from Microsoft showed up and destroyed the Symbian OS. Worse still there didnt have Android phones but there were many Windows Phone releases ... which didn't have any, not even the basic functions, it was a beta version of the system. Which other company have only phones with WP ?! Any ?! LG, Samsung, HTC ?! No...

            And what does this mean in the context of cameras? One of the key companies in the smartphone industry has been destroyed. Nokia stopped producing Symbian phones, the CEO banned Android phones and Windows Phone had ... 4% on a global scale! There were individual countries where more but it never exceeded 5%. Nokia had 30% of the market at the time of the change of CEO and after it was almost bankrupt - look on stock at that time. Thei "need to" sold the phone department to Microsoft (Elop) and they - MS later sold it to the Chinese.
            Who is setting the standards today? Samsung, iPhone / Apple and Huawei, which also practically stopped working. Because a phone without a system is useless - like Windows Phone.
            So what if Huawei has a great camera if it is a device that in many situations is a piece of glass and metal?
            It shows how easy it is to miss years of great performance, to lead and fail.
            After all, Nokia could easily switch to Android and be at least number two next to Smsung and then Huawei would probably have no chance in Europe, and Nokia was also quite popular in both Americas. Asia? Nokia also had a lot of fans. This shows that it is easy to lose everything.
            And the camera itself was great, many praised the Nokia 920, 1020 cameras, but it was an idea from years before someone thought about WP.
            If Nokia had the same people as it used to be, if it had continued to make phones and developed them for years, we would have been much further.

            And now when there is no Nokia, when Huawei ceased to exist outside China? Honor? Such an operation if successful, takes years.
            HTC - no comment.
            LG? It has practically ceased to sell phones outside of Korea, you can hardly buy their phones in Europe, maybe some cheap models. And the new camera in the LG V60 takes worse photos than its predecessor - is it a bad joke?!
            Sony? Two or three models a year. The Sony 1 and 5 II are ... very mediocre, technical is a folding box and nothing else. System? Pure Android because Sony stopped supporting its own applications! It's a bad sign when the manufacturer doesn't develop software.
            The cameras at Sony are lousy. They take a nice picture in very good light and make quite good movies. Apps called "pro" are lame. These are just functions that other manufacturers have in automatic mode.
            The Sony 1 and 5 II camera at night or in bright light takes pictures like a phone for 150-200 €, and Sony phones cost 800 € for 5 II and 1100 € for 1 II - that's sick!
            The pro mode has a few options, but it's fun for people who have too much time and are bored. The same photo, the same quality, can be taken, for example, Huawei 30 Pro without wasting time so ... where's the point? Sony probably wants to fool people who look at the brand, not the quality and time.
            Nokia (because today it is another company that has the rights to the brand), Huawei, LG, HTC, Sony - these companies almost or completely dropped out of the race.

              YUKI93, 28 Feb 202141MP PureView camera is not new on the Lumia 1020 as the 80... moreTrue.
              Although they weren't the same camera. The Nokia 808 actually had a much more advanced, larger and better camera than the Lumia 1020. The saving grace for the Microsoft phone over the Nokia phone was, it was much more thinner/compact, the processor was much faster, the photo-processing was newer, and the Operating System was more advanced (Symbian versus Windows Phone). Still, the Panasonic Lumix CM1 ate both of them for brekky.... and even worse is people don't want to use something like that, and rather a smartphone-camera system like in the Huawei Mate 40 Pro+

                • ?
                • Anonymous
                • MP6
                • 28 Feb 2021

                Kangal, 28 Feb 2021Other Honorable mentions: - Nokia 6610: one of the first c... morehmm most of the are not first :)
                1020,iphone5s,nokia to name a few :)

                  Kangal, 28 Feb 2021Other Honorable mentions: - Nokia 6610: one of the first c... more41MP PureView camera is not new on the Lumia 1020 as the 808 already used it. What is new in the Lumia 1020 is the introduction of OIS and RAW format support.

                    Other Honorable mentions:
                    - Nokia 6610: one of the first colour phones with a camera in mainstream
                    - Sony-Ericsson Z800: first 1.3MP camera iirc, with rotating/selfie camera
                    - Nokia N90: "handy-cam" style video recorder
                    - Nokia N95: first 5MP camera
                    - LG Optimus 3D: first 3D-camera smartphone
                    - Samsung S4 Zoom: first Point'n'Shoot hybrid smartphone
                    - Lumia 1020: first huge camera in Windows Phone (41MP PureView)
                    - iPhone 5S: first 120fps slow-mo video recording
                    - CAT S60: first built-in Thermal Camera in smartphone
                    - Honor 7i: first Flip-Up camera in smartphone
                    - Meizu 16S: smallest selfie-camera bezel

                      You skipped the first 5MP camera phones, which is when we started to get sharp-ish usable images.
                      In its day, the Nokia N95 5MP sensor blew everything else away. I mean, most other phones then were at 1.3 MP maximum.

                      The N95 was basically unrivaled with its Carl Zeiss lens.

                        The Nokia 808 may well be the first phone ever to use pixel binning, but they still keep the RGB Bayer filter unchanged, unlike today's Quad Bayer camera sensor. That is why the 808 can still produce true-to-life colours even when being cast on an FHD or 4K TV and PC monitor.

                        Oh btw, you should not forget the Apple iPhone 7 Plus for being the first phone with a useful dual camera setup. Despite both the G5 and the iPhone 7 Plus launched in the same year, LG went for the ultrawide route whereas Apple went for the telephoto route. Both are useful, though I incline way more to the telephoto as I can get a clear and sharp zoom photo without the need to move forward. Speaking of LG and ultrawide though, don't forget the V10 - the first ever smartphone to have an ultrawide front camera.

                          • W
                          • Woohoo
                          • 7kk
                          • 28 Feb 2021

                          Waiting for the upcoming parts

                            ultra wide and telephoto is best feature in a smartphone camera.

                              • S
                              • Shui8
                              • KZK
                              • 28 Feb 2021

                              Nice article 👌🏻. Looking forward to this.

                                • ?
                                • Anonymous
                                • 7kk
                                • 28 Feb 2021

                                where is sony ericsson cyber shot? xenon flash, camera shutter, super clear image, superior auto...

                                  • ?
                                  • Anonymous
                                  • pWD
                                  • 28 Feb 2021

                                  Wow. Seeing the One M8 on the list brought back all the bad stuff I experienced with that phone. Yikes. I still remember getting to see the picture "quality" on a bigger screen - it simply was not good. The hype was through the roof and there was nothing to back it up, really. Weird times.

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                                    • AnonD-940827
                                    • nQ1
                                    • 28 Feb 2021

                                    No Nokia 7610? The first phone with 1MP camera! Useless article, because it's only about the newer phones. Not the revolutionary ones!

                                      Reading this makes me appreciate :
                                      Huawei and the P20 Pro, Mate 20 Pro and the P30 Pro
                                      Google Pixel for the software

                                      They have taken smartphone photography to another level.

                                      Without Huawei, we wouldn't have :
                                      1. Night mode
                                      2. Telephoto lens at 3X
                                      3. Periscope telephoto
                                      4. Incredible lowlight photo at just "Auto" mode
                                      5. Night mode Video (it was introduced in Mate 30 Pro in the Ultrawide lens)
                                      6. Ultrawide lens (Huawei made it popular in Mate 20 Pro)
                                      7. Macro Lens on ultrawide or even the useless macro lens (i like the former, but the latter was just dissapointing)

                                      Without Google, we wouldn't have :
                                      1. HDR Zero Shutter Lag software
                                      2. Astrophotography mode
                                      3. Portrait mode in one lens
                                      4. Gcam app for affordable phones to boost cameras
                                      5. Impressive EIS software stabilization

                                        • B
                                        • Bondel
                                        • Kx6
                                        • 28 Feb 2021

                                        Nokia is the best

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