If you don’t believe the headline, then pinch yourself. The Nokia 8 hasn’t performed well on DxOMark’s scale, considering the price bracket it sits in. DxOMark managed to award HMD Global’s flagship smartphone an overall photography score of 68, bringing it down with the likes of top-end smartphones from budget Indian brands such as Lava. It couldn’t even manage to be on par with Samsung’s almost three-year-old Galaxy S6 Edge.
DxOMark’s test lab claimed that the Nokia 8 managed to “produce nice images in some situations, earning itself an overall Photo score of 72.” The phone manages to impress with well-balanced exposure, dynamic range and colour rendering. However, “in terms of texture and noise, the Nokia 8 noticeably lags behind other flagship phones. Fairly strong noise is visible in areas of plain colour, even in bright light, and levels of detail are generally low, with a lot of blurring of fine detail and textures,” states DxOMark. “The Nokia suffers from a very noticeable loss of sharpness in the field, with strong softness often visible towards the edges of the frame,” they added.
As for the video, it managed good colour rendering in bright light and indoor conditions. It also managed to get accurate target exposure under indoor and bright light conditions. However, there is a lack of wide dynamic range, poor autofocus in low light and low levels of details in all conditions.
Nokia was initially known for its prowess in photography, especially with its popular Nokia 808 PureView and the Lumia 1020. However, Nokia’s comeback flagship smartphone isn’t on the same levels as its predecessors, despite having the promising hardware. Maybe the company can iron out the issues with a software update or bring a better version of the same next year.
