Nokia N93 review: Ringing camcorder

Video

One of the highly advertised features of the N93 was the DVD-like quality video recording meaning that it shoots in a resolution of 640x480 pixels at the whopping 30 frames per second. Interesting additions to the video recording functionality are the two microphones on both sides of the body used to produce stereo audio for those precious videos. Nokia N93 has various settings to make the most of the video application to suit the user's taste perfectly.

Some video settings

The phone allows the users to zoom while recording. The sound from the zooming mechanism is also captured in the record although the phone decreases the sensitivity of the microphones while zooming and this way masks it a bit. If you don't want this sound in your movies, you have the option to disable the optical zoom during filming and rely on the digital zoom only. Anyway, don't expect the Nokia N93 captured videos to look as smooth as a DVD movie or minDV camcorder footage. What you can expect though is a better video quality than any other phone on the market.

Video samples VGA 30 fps, optical and digital zoom
6.5 MB • 7.3 MB

Video samples VGA 30 fps
digital zoom only 5.1 MB • no zoom 3.4 MB

Nokia N93 uses the free memory and thus has no limit (apart from the memory card free space) for the video records duration. To be able to record longer, you can switch to lower resolution - QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) or reduce the frames to 15 per second.

Video sample QVGA 30 fps 0.9 MB

Indoors, with limited amount of light, Nokia N93 shows surprisingly good results. The movies don't lose much quality due to the lack of light. In complete darkness, however, the situation changes. If you have hoped the LED will be able to emit enough light for the movies, well, you may be disappointed. Even from as close as 40 cm from the subject, the video camera can be used only in wide lens position and even then the quality is terrible. If you want to use the optical zoom (look at the sample) than you are out of luck, the camera records completely black scenes. Switching to night mode doesn't help either, it just adds some green tint to the black.

VGA 30 fps indoors 3.8 MB • QVGA 30 fps using LED 0.5 MB

The video camera has image stabilizer function. We must admit that we expected a bit more from it. We made several tests under different conditions and we didn't managed to see any significant difference when switching the stabilizer on.

QVGA 30 fps
Stabilizer off 1MB • stabilizer on 0.8 MB

In the end, we must repeat that Nokia N93 has excellent video recording capabilities for a phone. Currently, it has no rivals on the market. If we seem a little harsh on the phone, this is only because of the high "DVD-like" expectations.