Two OMAP 3430 Phones: Nokia N900 and Motorola Droid
by Brian Klug on June 10, 2010 9:29 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- N900
- Maemo
- Motorola Droid
- Droid
- MeeGo
- Android
- Mobile
Smartphone Camera Showdown
I'm a strong believer in objective comparison - I can opine for pages about the cameras and what I think about them, but ultimately you have to see the difference and make conclusions on your own. After all, the differences are obvious. For these camera reviews, I visited 7 different locations and took photos and one video with a number of phones. I'm going to do this for every phone I get my hands on, and build up a running comparison so we can really get a feeling for camera image quality. We're starting out with just a few, but I've got more for some phone reviews that aren't fully finished that'll come soon. ;)
We're working on a rollover table and gallery mashup that will let you view and compare all of the bench photos in an easy manner, but it isn't complete yet. Look for it soon, though!
Until then, all of the images are available in a zip file at full resolution (42 MB) here, and I've chosen one of the 7 locations to inline for comparison below.
HTC Droid Incredible
Motorola Droid
There are also videos from each of the phones at the highest quality settings, and uploaded them to YouTube. For these videos, I haven't made any modifications or edits, just uploaded the videos in their native formats from the desktop:
HTC Droid Incredible
Motorola Droid
Nokia N900
These should give you a pretty good feel for camera performance in a variety of locations - bright and dark, and of subjects with lots of colors. Where the N900's video is both higher resolution and crisper, the Motorola Droid's looks a bit noisy and seems to have a lower bitrate. The iPhone 3GS actually seems the most fluid in practice, though it adjusts exposure very aggressively while panning from the brightly-lit intersection to the shadowed wall across the street.
It's pretty apparent that the N900's camera is superior to the Motorola Droid's. The Motorola Droid's camera could use a bit more saturation and appears to have totally missed focus on the first image of the tree, if not a couple other images. I took the best photo of a few - all of these were marginal. The N900's camera is shockingly good - rivaling the HTC Incredible's in a number of cases. Interestingly, the HTC Incredible totally misses white balance in image 6, appearing way too blue.
There's quite a bit of variety in image aspect ratio and focal length between all of the cameras. Keep in mind I stood in the same location for all these tests.
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DaveGirard - Saturday, June 12, 2010 - link
sweet Jesus, that Nokia phone is huge. Does it double as an ice cream sandwich cover?metafor - Sunday, June 13, 2010 - link
Cortex is the CPU designed by ARM. This is available as a hard-macro (layout already done) or soft-macro (just the functional RTL). Some companies license this in either version. For those who license the soft-version, such as TI, nVidia and Broadcom, they can do a customized place-and-route along with clock-tree optimizations and voltage partitioning to try to make the design run faster.However, the micro-architecture is the same.
A few companies have ARM architectural licenses (Apple, Qualcomm, Marvell) and instead of licensing the Cortex line of processors, they design their own. The micro-architecture is developed independent of what ARM did in their Cortex series albeit there will often be similarities.
Scorpion inside Snapdragon was developed in the course of years and while it has many similarities to the A8 from a power-point standpoint, the micro-architecture underneath was designed from the ground up. Everything from the branch predictors, the cache controller, exception handling, execution units and most notably, a partially OoOE scheduler and retirement buffer.
There's also the 128-bit, fully pipelined, partially OoOE SIMD/FP unit.
medi01 - Sunday, June 13, 2010 - link
Well, I find it very strange, that "incidentally" iPhone is never shown in bad light. Could you please update your side to side comparison?Impulses - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - link
Personally I think there's better things for you guys to do or test with your time... Who cares if a phone's screen colors are more or less accurate, as long as they aren't outright flawed or ugly to look at it shouldn't be a big deal, not like anyone's gonna be doing any pro content editing work on their phones! (I don't even own an AMOLED screen so I'm not particularly biased one way or the other, I own an EVO atm)mojtabaalemi - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
I hate the design of nokia mobile phones . in my idea an iphone is far far better !paihuaizhe - Sunday, June 20, 2010 - link
(nike-alliance).(com)=>is a leading worldwide wholesaler company (or u can sayorganization)
arnavvdesai - Saturday, June 26, 2010 - link
I was just wondering if the author had installed AdBlock+ and then run the browser speed numbers or without it being on. If it was not installed which is what I am guessing from the photos, did you notice an improvement in the render times when it was installed. I actually bought the phone recently after seeing it on sale for 380$ and wanted to know the details. Also, I have heard that the current build of the OS allows potrait mode even for the browser(although it has to be activate through some setting) and not just the phone.drwiremore - Sunday, July 4, 2010 - link
Amanda, delighted to have found you. Given the issues in the title, affecting 20~50% of MOTO Droid users, was surprised to see no mention of it. The MOTO boards are alive with disdain and some feel an in you face attitude by Motorola Droid 2 and X announcements. Would you do an iPhone like analysis of voice, antenna and signal issues across Verizons Droids: HTC incredible and MOTO Droid. Your scientific analysis would be welcomed.