Hacker News Reader

Comment by mbesto | Hacker News Reader

4.5-inch PureMotion HD+ display, dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 CPU, 2,000mAh battery, NFC, integrated wireless charging and an 8-megapixel rear PureView camera capable of 1080p video. The display packs WXGA (1,280 x 768) resolution, is 25 percent brighter than the next best panel on the market and it's the fastest LCD that Nokia has ever shipped on a smartphone.

What...on Earth...does this all mean?!? Consumers don't care about any of this. I'm tech savvy and I still don't know why having a 8MP camera makes pictures look any better? Furthermore, I have no idea what my iPhone has in terms in Megapixels, so I have nothing to compare it to...

View on HN

What's wrong with listing the specs? Should they rather say that it's magical and changes everything? Again?

Then this video is for you, there's also one comparison shot with a 'leading smartphone': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8_Z7_kJ3_g

The optical image stabilization is nothing short of revolutionary on this device. It enables both smooth video and low-light images. See the comparisons in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cimDfEIEiu0

The first video is just nonsense, but if that second one is accurate it shows just how game-changing this stuff could be. I would buy a phone for the image stabilization alone.

In the second video they use a van to record, not a bike, look at 0:27 glass reflection.

With a ban I could also get stable shots.

Trying to fool customers, they are so desperate.

It's a bit misleading. They used a rack with unstabilized and stabilized phone to film both versions at the same time. Both videos are filmed from the van, so the OIS is not fake. They showed this rack setup in their launch event.

You're reading Engadget. What did you expect? They live for specs.

I very much doubt the actual consumer pitch is going to be like this.

Fair point. Maybe it's because I'm not an avid mobile gamer, but what apps demand specs like this? I guess even in a technical discussion, I would expect to see some benchmarking like "2,000mAh battery provides 2.5h more hours of battery life, etc"

It is not easy to provide those numbers because there are no standards for battery tests. 2.5 hours of what? Browsing? Video playback? What level of brightness? In an area of weak signal or perfect signal?

I would say it's easier to provide numbers when there are no standards; just make up your own tests (see "Smoked by Windows Phone").

> Consumers don't care about any of this

But they do care - everything about a phone is what makes it. My GF doesn't are about the HP in my car, but she does care about how fast it goes when she presses the pedal, therefore, she does care about HP.

The specifications are not rendered moot because someone, like yourself, is too short minded to realize them...but unlike you, they know enough to keep their ignorance inside their head.

> I'm tech savvy and I still don't know why having a 8MP camera makes pictures look any better?

It means you need a slightly larger SD card, to store all the sensor noise.

I just love how they are calling it HD+, because it has a 1280x768 resolution instead of 1280x720. Was that really worth a whole new marketing term?

It think it's trying to head off customers who complain about the black bars around their 720p videos.

Sorry, you are NOT tech savvy if you don't know the pixel count of the phone you own.

Edit: i meant the camera mpx and not screen resolution. If you dont know tha your 8mpx camera phone has 8mpx camera, you are NOT tech savvy.

I write iOS apps for a living and found myself looking up the resolution of an iPhone yesterday - this is not something you know by heart. The raw pixel count is simply not relevant except for a small number of cases.

If you design for them it is, although I can't say the knowledge means you are or aren't a technical person in any way.

Rubbish. I'm by pretty much any measure tech savvy, and I simply don't care about what the pixel count of my phone is. Is it enough? Then job done. I'll spend my time caring about stuff that makes a difference to me.

I don't think most consumers know how much MPs are in the camera, nor have any idea what the number means in terms of picture quality. Hence this: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm

My dad, mom and sis know what Mpx camera they have on their phones. And my mom and dad are no way close to being tech savvy. What the number means is a whole different question. But if you don't know that in your phone, you cannot begin to say that you are tech savvy.

So someone who's playing with node.js, EC2, Arduinos, etc. isn't tech savvy because they didn't read their phone's spec sheet when they bought it?

Most costumers don't yes. But tech savvy ones do.

A tech-savvy person probably knows that raw megapixel numbers are meaningless. A non-tech-savvy person probably got the number from the guy at Best Buy trying to make his commission.

I'm tech-savvy. I honestly couldn't tell you how many MP the camera in my iPhone has.

That's complete and utter bullshit.

I work on a smartphone OS for a living (Boot2Gecko) and yet, I have no idea what the pixel count on my Galaxy Nexus (my personal phone) is, or that of the last two phones I owned (Samsung Focus and HTC HD7). It's not something I care to know about my phone; all I care about is that it looks sharp.

My comment was not clear on what I meant by pixel count, but if you had read the parent, you would know that I was talking about the camera Mpx count and not screen resolution. I don't know the latter exactly either.

Can't say that I know the MP count on any of my current/past phones either, despite using the cameras quite frequently. Again, it's just not something that matters to me -- if I care about super high quality, I use my DSLR. Saying that you're not "tech savvy" if you don't know these things is just downright pretentious.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com