I was out with some of my friends having a drink and it happens that one of my friends own a Nokia N82. As you may know the N82 is posses an unique feature not yet seen again on any other Nokia mobile, Im talking about the Xenon flash.

Since the N82 birth, nokia has not released another device sporting the xenon flash, instead, they have been giving all the cameras the standard LED flash, and sometimes doubling it up to two LEDs. The quality of the LED flash has been discussed greatly, they usually do not work as well as the xenon flash while taking pictures, but they do a great job lighting up scenes when recording videos in low light, something that cannot be done with the Xenon flash.

So I asked my friend to run a test, comparing both devices. The N97 dual LED flash, and the N82 Xenon flash. Pictures were taken in complete darkness, the camera app was set to night portrait and the objects/person where from 5 to 8 feet away, which is the normal distance we use in the real world. We took an object picture and a person. Pictures after the jump.

N97/N82 in this order

So the result is undeniable, the N82 remains the king the night pictures. The Xenon gives better colours and better lightning. Also sharpness is better. The N97 does an ok job, though. Im just wondering when will Nokia start releasing devices with xenon flash for pictures and dual LED for videos. That would be enough.

David Castro