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Crazy for colours: snag yourself a bold phone
by Michelle Brändle
Nokia 7.2 First Look: Old, new, camera, business... what?
5.9.2019
Translation: machine translated
The Nokia 7.2 looks really good. With a never-before-seen back in a never-before-seen colour, the device impresses at first glance. But the software could break the smartphone's back.
Nokia has teamed up with Zeiss, which is now a tradition, and has installed Zeiss cameras in the Nokia 7.2. That promises a lot. But after the first hands-on, a question arises: Does the software put a spanner in the works of the camera hardware?
The Finns' risky game
The Nokia 7.2 makes little sense. Both in terms of design and market positioning. Before we get to the big problem with the camera, let's take a look at the rest of the confusing package, which only allows one conclusion to be drawn: Nokia is ambitious and hungry.
As nice as the hardware and price may be, Nokia's understanding of its own target group is strange. With a price and a camera of this calibre, the target group would be the market in India/Asia. This translates more or less like this for the local market: teenagers who like cameras and low prices.
Camera versus software
Nokia has saved money up to this point. But when it comes to the camera, that's where the Finns really go for it. I know from photography that Zeiss doesn't deliver anything that isn't planned and engineered down to the last detail. That's why the 48 megapixels delivered by the triple cam on the back of the phone are just the beginning of the image quality that the smartphone can deliver.
Could.
I'm riffing a bit about the camera now, but want to preface this by saying that none of the things I'm criticising can't be fixed with a software update to make it acceptable. In addition, it is often the case at preview events that phones are not equipped with the software that will run on the retail models. This is the case at the Zeiss event.
With smartphones, unlike with cameras, it's not just the mechanical components of the camera system that make the difference. This is because the aim of a smartphone camera is to deliver as much clear image information as possible. Then the software takes over and does the maths. For the software to be able to calculate, it needs solid hardware. And this is precisely the point where Nokia really shouldn't have cut corners, but did anyway.
If the pictures were great, then I could live with it under certain circumstances. But if the hardware has forwarded the data to the software, then it does its thing. To put it very simply. And the software does extremely strange things.
The Nokia 7.2 is strangely fiddling around. This image can serve as an example.
In and of itself not a problem. But on closer inspection, two things stand out. Firstly, there is the lamp in the background, which is either supposed to be blurred by the software, but that went wrong.
That would still work, but then I suddenly have two index fingers on my right hand in the picture. What went wrong there? The light in the room was excellent, even if it was LED lights, which produce flickering if the shutter speed is too high. Because LEDs don't light up in the eye of the camera, they flash. They simply flash faster than your human eye can perceive.
Nothing that can't be fixed with software updates. Because if Nokia can get this under control, then the 7.2 is a camera monster that will probably be a sight to behold.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
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