The Google Nexus 9 Review
by Joshua Ho & Ryan Smith on February 4, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- HTC
- Project Denver
- Android
- Mobile
- NVIDIA
- Nexus 9
- Lollipop
- Android 5.0
Camera
In the case of tablets, cameras have become increasingly important. While it’s still a bit awkware to take photos and video with a tablet, there is still value to having decent cameras on a tablet. For the front-facing camera, it’s pretty clear that there is a lot of value to be had here as the tablet can be a good tool for video conferencing in lieu of a bulky laptop. The rear camera can also have value, but mostly for taking a photo of a whiteboard or simply when opportunity dictates. To fulfill these duties, the Nexus 9 has been outfitted with a rather standard set of cameras. On the rear, we see an 8MP, 1/4 inch format sensor while the front-facing camera has a 1.6MP, 1/5 inch sensor. I’ve included a table of the full camera specs below in the interest of readability.
| Camera Specifications | |||
| Google Nexus 9 | |||
| Front Camera | 1.6MP | ||
| Front Camera - Sensor | OV9760 (1.75µm, 1/5") |
||
| Front Camera - Focal Length | 2.18mm | ||
| Front Camera - Max Aperture | F/2.18 | ||
| Rear Camera - Sensor | IMX219 (1.12 µm, 1/4") |
||
| Rear Camera - Focal Length | 3.097mm (33mm eff) | ||
| Rear Camera - Max Aperture | F/2.4 | ||
This is pretty much par for the course when it comes to tablets. The optics aren’t particularly remarkable in one way or another, as I haven’t noticed any obvious design issues in any of my test photos, and the focal length isn’t excessively long or short. The UI that comes with Google Camera in general is unremarkable as well. This isn’t a slight against it, but the fact that I don’t have anything significant to complain about is a good step forward from the past when the design of the camera UI was a significant friction point in the user experience.
The one issue that I’ve noticed is that the camera’s auto focus and capture speed are significantly worse than what I saw on the iPad Air 2. Unfortunately, it isn’t really possible to have standardized testing here as a tablet can’t be mounted to a tripod for testing. As there isn’t a custom ISP in the Nexus 9, it’s likely that the Tegra ISP isn’t up to scratch here as I noticed that AF speed is similar to what I saw on the SHIELD Tablet despite differing camera modules.
For the most part, there’s not much else to be said about the camera systems on the Nexus 9 as they aren’t quite as heavily focused as one would see in the smartphone space. All that’s left to do is test the cameras themselves.
In this basic test of daytime photo quality, we can see that HTC has done a reasonably good job of processing the image as noise is generally suppressed without an enormous loss of detail. However, there really isn't a lot of detail to speak of in this sensor. There's also a decent amount of dynamic range as there's detail in the shadows but there's no HDR mode to compensate in cases where there is insufficient dynamic range. HTC continues to cap the base ISO to 100, which seems to be a strange move in this situation as the shutter speed is more than high enough to drive the sensor gain even lower.
In this low light scenario, the Nexus 9 effectively falls flat on its face. With an ISO of 3200 and a shutter speed of 1/12s, there's effectively no detail past the first set of steps. Luminance noise is strong and present throughout the image, and color noise also has a tendency to creep in as well. Given the sheer size of the tablet, it's also hard to stably hold the tablet to take a photo despite the relatively fast 1/12s shutter speed. One should really avoid using this to take photos in low light unless there's no other choice.
In video, detail generally tends to be about the same as what one can find in photos, which means that daytime footage should have decent quality but low light rapidly reduces the quality as the sensor gain must increase. In the case of the Nexus 9, we see that video tops out at 1080p30 maximum with no slow motion available, and that the file is in a .3gp format instead of a standard mp4 that most are familiar with. The video itself is encoded with H.264 baseline at 14 Mbps, which is likely to be below the maximum that the encoder can support. There doesn't appear to be any significant level of stabilization in this case, which is a bit disappointing although not entirely surprising. There is also a lot of focus hunting throughout the video, which is quite distracting.
Overall, it seems that the camera on the Nexus 9 is an acceptable one for a tablet, although this would effectively be unacceptable on a high-end smartphone. The camera itself produces decent output in daytime but really suffers in low light due to the small pixel size, relatively narrow aperture, and small sensor. There are also a lot of issues with consistent and reliable auto focus, as it often takes multiple focus runs to get the camera to focus properly on even high contrast objects. Each focus run takes a significant amount of time as well, which hurts the shooting experience when combined with the somewhat long capture latency. I would avoid using this camera unless it is strictly necessary, although it isn't terrible as a camera for cases such as document scanning.
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seanleeforever - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
2nd that.I am not here to read about how fast the tablet is or how nice it looks. i am here for in depth content about the chip. would it be nice that this content was available since the release of the product? absolutely, but given the resource it would either be a brief review that is going to be the same as review you can find from hundred of other websites, or late but in depth.
honestly i think anand should be targeting at more tech oriented contents that's few but in depth, and leave the quick/dirty review for other websites.
superb job.
WaitingForNehalem - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Yeah but who cares about tablets??!! I don't come to Anandtech to read about budget tablets, or SFF PCs, or more smartphones. The Denver coverage was not even that in depth TBH, just commentary on the NVidia slides. I have a EE degree and some of the previous write ups were so in depth they could be class material. This one isn't which is fine but I don't think it excuses how late it came out. The enthusiast market is growing and you should be targeting that demographic as you previously have, not catering to the mainstream like hundreds of sites already do.retrospooty - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
The enthusiast market is growing ? What with CPU's not really getting, or needing to be any faster for several years now, and a standard mid range quad core i5 (non-overclocked) being WAY more than powerful enough to run 99.9% of anything out there, how is the enthusiast market is growing? Most enthusiasts I know don't even bother any more... There just isnt a need. Any basic PC is great these days.WaitingForNehalem - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
I totally agree with you. That doesn't change the fact that the market is growing as more users are adopting gaming PCs. Enthusiasts now actually command a sizable portion of desktops sold. Intel's Devil's Canyon was in response to that.retrospooty - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
OK, I get what you mean.I guess I am still in a mind set where a PC "enthusiast" is your overclocker, tweaker, buying the latest and fastest of everything to eek out that extra few frames per second.
Today, a mid range quad core i5 from 3 years ago and a decent mid-high range card runs any game quite nicely.
FunBunny2 - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
There was a time, readers may be too young to have been there, when there was a Wintel monopoly: M$ needed faster chips to run ever more bloated Windoze and Intel needed a cycle-sink to soak up the increase in cycles that evolving chips provided. Now, we're near (or at?) the limits of single-threaded performance, and still haven't found a way to use multi-processor/core chips in individual applications. There just aren't a) many embarrassingly parallel problems and b) algorithms to turn single-threaded problems into parallel code. I mean, the big deal these days is 4K displays? It looks prettier, to some eyes, but doesn't change the functionality of an application (medical and such excepted, possibly).Does anyone really need an i7 to surf the innterTubes for neater porn?
nico_mach - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
I think the chip coverage was superb, I don't have an EE degree and I'm pretty sure that's what the website is steered towards. And I still think I got it.It's fascinating the number of layers involved in this Android tablet, and speaks to why Apple can optimize so much better. There's the chip->NVIDIA chip optimizer->executable code->Dalvik compiler/runtime->dalvik code. I mean, when the lags are encountered, that's twice as many suspects to investigate.
I still think that the review is a little harsh on Denver. It's hitting the right performance envelope at the right price. While it's an mildly inefficient design, clearly NVIDIA is pricing it accordingly, and that might be a function of moving some of the optimization work to software. And that's work that Apple and MS do all the time - Apple much more successfully, obviously. There's a real gap in knowledge of how efficient Apple's chips are vs how optimized the software/hardware pairing is.
dakishimesan - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
I have no interest in tablets, but the deep dive on Denver was a fascinating read, and still completely relevant even if the product is a few months old. Thanks for the great review.Sindarin - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
...can I offer you a cup of hot chicken soup laddy? .....maybe some vicks vapor rub? lol! c'mon dude! we're all sick(vaca) in December!hahmed330 - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Hi, outstanding article with incredible attention to detail... Do you think its possible to run Dynamic Code Optimizer on per say 2 or maybe even 4 small cpu cores dedicated to doing all the software OoOE functions instead of using time slicing? (A53s or just some XYZ narrow cores for a potential 2+2 or 4+4 or maybe even 8+8)Also whats the die size of a denver core in comparison to a enhanced cyclone core?? That is where a lot of gains are possible potentially 30%-50%..