After an excruciatingly long series of rumors and leaks, the day has finally come and the Nexus 5 has officially landed. But while the smartphone touts specs that, by now, sound a wee bit common among high-end Android smartphones, one piece of its hardware, its camera, deserves a special mention.
Mobile photography has become quite a phenomenon ever since smartphone cameras started to cross the megapixel threshold, lately even to two-digit sizes. Of course, megapixel count isn’t the only factor that determines a camera’s ability to produce quality images and videos, and so we see smartphones that brag about other features near and dear to photographers’ hearts. Of late, it seems that the distinction of having one of the best smartphone cameras has been bequeathed to the new iPhone 5s. But now it may be facing a new rival.
The newly announced Nexus 5′s camera features are definitely something worth talking about. It may not have the double-digit megapixel count that the Sony Xperia Z1 or the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 have, sporting only 8 megapixels like the iPhone 5s. It does hover, include Optical Image Stabilizatin (OIS), one of the most desired features in smartphone cameras which a lot of models don’t posses. The Nexus 5 also boasts of an HDR+ mode that is quite useful for taking rapid bursts shots. And oon the software side, there is, of course, Photo Sphere that takes advantage of the camera’s features to produce high-quality 360-degree photos.
Now that the Nexus 5 is official, photos demonstrating its camera’s capabilities have started returning to the Internet, particularly on Google+. A few caveat about these images must be noted. These photos were not taken at the camera’s full resolution and it is unknown whether the social networking service’s Auto Awesome feature applied some edits to the photos before they were posted. Nonetheless, the images still show remarkable outdoor and indoor quality that puts the Nexus 5 near if not right at the top of the camera smartphone list.
VIA: SlashGear
