Nokia XL review Part 2

Introduction

Taking note that the Nokia XL is an affordable handset, what it offer is pretty nifty. Having a 5MP rear camera with LED flash and a 2MP front camera which can be very useful for teleconferencing and selfies.

On paper, the rear camera do looked interesting and can get the job done extremely well. Hereby, I will do a review on the camera and see if it can deliver as spec.

Of Camera

The main camera of Nokia XL is a 5MP camera that had a four times digital zoom and sported a 1/4 inch sensor.

The camera had Auto focus and a focal length of 32mm (which actually is not that wide and I would prefer at least a 28mm or 24mm wide). What I am surprised was that it had inbuilt LED flash too. Which is a welcoming addition for an affordable handset.

The first thing I find lacking was the dedicated shutter button, unlike my Nokia Lumia 1520. It was hardly a deal breaker, but I really like to have one.

The image quality of the main camera is actually quite good if you are shooting at the correct environment and under the correct lighting condition.

If you set the ISO to auto, be prepared for a not that good quality images that is a big disappointment because most people would just leave the ISO to auto. However when I manually

 ISO-100

 ISO-200

 ISO-400

The image quality for small size, even up to ISO 400 is pretty good, of course there are noises taking that it was a small sensor, I am not expecting too much.

The issue I had with the camera is its auto-ISO, which I find is not accurate and somehow the images achieved is inconsistent, some of images are passable, others are totally not worth looking at.

Also under very harsh lighting, images achieved are very 'hard' as seen in the undermentioned photo;

From the photo, if I can direct your attention to the 'white' ground, you can see that all the details are actually gone, replaced by mere white ground and the grasses seemed overly sharpened (of course you can reduce the sharpness in the handset itself - before you take the photo and I believe it will help abit here).

In softer lighting though... image quality could be quite good.

So if you are using the phone camera in controlled lighting or at least know where to position your phone, you can actually achieve pretty acceptable results.

Keeping in mind that this is suppose to be an affordable handset, I think I can overlook most of the issues mentioned.

One good thing about this handset in term of photography, was that there was a LED flash built into the phone for the main camera. This feature was not even there for the Nokia Lumia phones like the 630, 520, etc.

The issue with the LED flash was that, it was not bright enough for most purposes, and as usual, you need to know how to control or set the lighting to achieve a good result.

So I would recommend that you leave the LED flash alone, unless absolutely necessary.

with flash

 without flash

The above two photos are taken at roughly the same time, one with the LED flash activated and another with the flash deactivated. As seen the result are totally different and the flash is not doing the flower a credit. It is difficult to do a standard fill in flash for the camera mainly because of the lack of certain manual control, unlike the Nokia 1520, 1020, etc... but coming from a handset that is selling at S$239, I am expecting the differences, so it is alright.

That said, Nokia XL did have certain level of manual control over its camera, like manual selection for it ISO setting, sharpness level, Contrast level, white balance and exposure. These welcoming features are important for people like myself as I could use these settings to get the shot I wanted.

The LED flash is actually quite useful when certain app was loaded and it can turn your phone into a torchlight.

Video

As mentioned in Part 1, there is no dedicated movie player for the movie, and whatever shot will be recorded into the gallery folder of the phone. Since I am not a good videographer nor was my interest lying in the video aspect, I have tested only whether the video work as mentioned.

One thing is... it is easy to take video, not much fuss over there and the AF worked pretty well. The quality of the video is passable like its still photos, but I am not seeing anything stellar.

The sound recorded is quite accurate when played using the Nokia XL.

I have no complain for the video aspect of the camera.

Conclusion for the Photography experience of the phone

Designed to be appealing to mass market for an affordable handset, I would say that the pro outweighs the cons for the camera. I would not compare it with the 20MP or 41MP camera found on the Nokia 1520 and Nokia 1020 respectively, they are different beasts. The little camera of the Nokia XL hold its ground well alone, it was no much better or lesser than most of its competitions sporting 5MP cameras.

Pro:

- Easy to use camera UI
- Quite good image quality (if you select your own ISO) for its class under correct lighting condition
- came with inbuilt LED flash
- Fast AF that was accurate
- Quite a lot of art filters for its camera class
- Can select own ISO, white balance, exposure, sharpness and contrast.

Con

- No dedicated camera shutter button.
- Inaccurate photo quality when using auto-ISO
- LED flash is very weak and very difficult to control in order to achieve a shot I wanted.
- No manual focusing, controlling of aperture and shutter speed.