In the past, Nokia has shown that they know what a photographer wants in a smartphone camera app: lots and lots of manual control options. Combining that amount of control with a great camera made many a photographer drool over the company’s Lumia devices. However, if you wanted to experience all that goodness, you were stuck with the Windows Phone system that Nokia’s new handsets come with, which isn’t to everyone’s taste. For those preferring the Android experience, but wishing for a similarly powerful photographic experince, there is a beam of light, though.
For its Nokia X device, the Finnish manufacturer has created a camera app similar to that of its Lumia devices. And because the Nokia X runs on Android, the app should, in theory, be portable to other Android devices. That’s exactly what a member of the XDA forums set out to prove, apparently with success. The developer, going by the forum alias “xperiaz2,” managed to pull the app from the Nokia X, and hacked it to make it work with other Android phones running version 4.1 or higher.
So, what’s in the Nokia X camera app that you should get excited about? If you’re a photography enthusiast, you’ll appreciate the ability to manually set the camera’s ISO sensitivity, tweak the amount of noise reduction that the app applies to an image, or enable a live histogram that helps you preserve highlight and/or shadow information. There are, however, a couple downsides. For one, the app may not work on all devices. Some users report that they are encountering so-called “forced closes” when using the app, which means basically that the app gets shut down by the system for some reason. (We failed to get it to work with a Sony Xperia V.)
Also, the image quality is reportedly not very good because the app applies a lot of compression to the images in order to save storage space. This is a well-known problem with smartphones, and in addition to aggressive noise reduction, one of the main reasons why many photographers often don’t use their phones for any serious work. Still, for some the Nokia X camera app may just be what they’ve been looking for, i.e., a way to exert more control over the image parameters when shooting with their phones.
If you want to give the app a try, you can find it over at the XDA forums. Keep in mind, though, that the app has never been officially tested and certified to work on any Android phone other than the Nokia X. Be warned: You’ll be using the app at your own risk, so neither its creator, nor XDA forums, nor Digital Trends can be held responsible for any damage it might cause to your device.
If you manage to successfully load the app onto your Android device, let us know about it in the comments section below.
