[wrender]

I went though all my photos from the start of owning the N8 when it first came out till now. I was surprised to see that a high number of the belle photos are soft or not focused properly. I take a lot of candid photos every day so this is easy to see under normal usage conditions.

[bosoko2]

When I try to take a macro photo of a pencil, it only focuses properly once out of 20 times. The other times the focus kind-of zooms past the proper position.

I don't remember what it did on Anna, though. But it sure would be nice if they gave us an update.

[jake20]

I emailed Steve Litchfield from All About Symbian regarding this matter, but he claims to not have any issues.

Thats really hard to believe, but Steve, to my knowledge seems like an honest guy.

Nokia is done with the N8.. Neither Damian Dinning or anyone over at Nokia seems to care anymore.

They are busy with the 808 and windows phones..

Its a real shame though, because there is DEFINITELY an issue here.

Pictures with Belle (especially low light) come out, out of focus, lots of noise, and jacked up high ISO levels now.

Nokia, we are not crazy, there is an issue here!!!!

[Jaff0]

I have to say, I'm really baffled as to why so many jumped to upgrade to Belle. Thing is, there was already lots of negative feedback about it, here, for quite some time.

Even now, there's still so many posts and threads clamouring for it for their particular N8 - but I just don't get it. Given the spec of the camera in the N8, this is a serious issue, yet there still seems so many desperate for Belle - I wonder how many of them who were desparate to get it, have now regretted it once they've got it.

Personally, I'd written it off weeks ago, as I didn't want my maps 3.06 ruining by any of the later versions.

[secarica]

Peoples were encouraged to do so by the Nokia Suite in the first place. I personally was attracted by the idea of having the freedom to place individual shortuts anywhere, this being one of just a few things I have read before, and the perspective of having camera the update as default in the system (as opposed to relying on the beta version, which was the single ever software that once locked my N8 and forced me to remove the battery).

Personally I couldn't resist with the Belle more than 10 days approx, so now I am back to Anna on my own. I am not happy with this situation, I really miss the ability to place individual shorcuts different when in portrait versus landscape (something nice that I didn't read before), the "back" button wich was very handy and the flat style of application shortcuts (this being something I ever disliked on Nokia Symbians). Unfortunately the annoyances were toooo many, most of them related to hideous enormous widgets and the somewhat stupid necessity to have to switch everytime between WiFi and GSM data connection instead of some automatic priority (not even Anna is brilliant here, but is still better, though). The marketing statement that "with Belle you can have now up to six home screens" turned out to be "with Belle you have no choice than to have six home screens just to be able to do the same as previously with three".

I cannot tell much about the camera issue on my Belle short experience, except that *it seems* to me that there was some more unwanted artificial sharpness (like when the sharpness in settings were already set to "high"), or the additional black noise or perhaps grain resembled that. As I am primarily interested in N8's photo (this is why I have purchased the N8 in the first place) and only marginally interested in N8's video (and the fact that I also have CameraPro, which works perfect with video), going back to Anna was an acceptable compromise.

Back on "I'm really baffled as to why so many jumped to upgrade to Belle", whenever I open Nokia Suite after system (Windows) reboot I am prompted with "New upgrade available for your device! Upgrade now to Belle to benefit from blah, blah". Now it is easy to ignore, but for a pure and naive user it is just a click ahead.

Cristi

[Bushika]

What a shame that Nokia guys do not have the decency to let us revert to Anna if we so wish without a hassle. Worse still is that the do not acknowledge that they gave us a half-baked product in Belle. And the worst is that they do not even give a hint that they will try to rectify the mess(so called "upgrade") they created.... The lower parts of my videos are so blurred since I got Belle to the extent that I have do delete all my recordings since the "upgrade"...

[secarica]

... During my downgrade-to-Anna process I  noticed the following:

1. this picture http://www.secarica.ro/test/2012-02-19_141400_n8.jpg was taken with 011.005 firmware version
2. this picture http://www.secarica.ro/test/2012-02-24_140834_n8.jpg was taken with 022.014 firmware version

Picture 1. is very smooth, details are natural; I noticed on this firmware version that the focus was ok very quick and in almost every circumstance

Picture 2. has higher contrast; with this firmware version the focus is ok almost everytime, but somwhat slower than on 1 and with more statistic failures

Could be that on Belle the contrast has been further augmented and so the focus has become more difficult to set up ?

Just a thought ... 

Cristi

[Kiltswinger]

I wish I had found this thread two weeks ago.

I've been following an ongoing competition since last October, concluding last Saturday, all taking place in the same, let's be kind, and call it a "warmly lit" room.

Last week I took a still picture and was rather peturbed when I saw it was blurry, dark and grainy, but thought that it was simply because I rushed and didn't pay enough attention (large room, award ceremony), especially since all my other pics with this camera are so good.

Then I found this thread.

I compared a video that I had taken last October with the one I took last week.

Exact same lighting, time of evening, I was standing in the exact same place.

The video from October looked as if it had been taken in the afternoon.  Light and focus was bright and crisp and steady.

Last week's is abysmal -- dark, grainy and unsteady.

The only difference between the two?  The Belle update.

No question - I'm going back to Anna.  I can't afford to have once-in-a-lifetime moments ruined by a **bleep** update.

I would finish by saying YMMV, but I don't think it does.

[gcodrut]

hy,the main problem in my opinion is that the focus is all wrong especially when the light isn't very bright and even if you try to get the autofocus another time you get the same problem.if you could do something to downgrade it like how it was before or to fix the problem it would be great.thank's

[Jaff0]

---

secarica wrote:

Back on "I'm really baffled as to why so many jumped to upgrade to Belle", whenever I open Nokia Suite after system (Windows) reboot I am prompted with "New upgrade available for your device! Upgrade now to Belle to benefit from blah, blah". Now it is easy to ignore, but for a pure and naive user it is just a click ahead.

Cristi

---

I get that - and I understand that for naive or uninformed users, it would probably be a natural thing to just follow Nokia suite.

Problem is, though, there's loads of people, still complaining in here, that Belle still isn't available for their handset (actually, don't think it's yet available for my particular N8) - it's that I don't get - they're all in this forum already - aren't they reading all the threads with people unhappy about Belle, or are they just in denial?

[jake20]

Nokia support is no longer responding, and if they do they are saying that Belle has no affect on quality.

I am beginning to think maybe our camera modules or xenon flash are going faulty now.

Any shot I take in lower light comes out an awful mess, full of noise and out of foucs.

[jake20]

here is another example of the issue, image attached.. just look at the awful distortion when zooming in on the price tags.

this is an example of the images i am getting now,, auto mode

something is wrong here.

someone help!

[VijayPadiyar]

@jake20 This is EXACTLY the problem I am seeing. Improperly focused blurry images in auto mode. Something I never ever experienced in Anna.

[asm21m]

YES, Not just the camera quality, but also quality of videos is dropped too. Belle update has impacted the sharpness of the videos..

[jake20]

@VijayPadiyar

but the problem is that Nokia support and others are claiming their N8's are fine.

So they are not looking into helping resolve this, which is not good for us.

I only hope that its not a hardware issue, and maybe a factory reset, and mass memory disk wipe resolves this.

I think that is the only option left to try.

Have you tried doing this yet?

Is you phone hacked or modded in any way?

[mythofuniverse]

After upgrading to belle, my camera's autofocus has gone.. i find very huge difference in the same photo taken with auto focus mode & close up mode..

Low light condition photos are a bit blurry.... i think ISO levels are bugged in belle..

in case of videos with night & low light situations,

in automatic mode: videos taken are 30fps

in low light mode: videos taken are 15fps, with little grains

in night mode: videos taken are 5 fps, with heavy blurriness in motion

i dont know how there is drastic frame rate change.. i take a lot of videos in low light conditions.. belle upadate ruined my n8...  bring us back the anna camera..in belle fp1

[pauli_p]

I have no idea what you guys are talking about. I have had Belle with N8 for over a month and I haven't seen any camera quality degradation whatsoever. Perhaps the default settings have been changed sligthly, I don't know, but no issues here.

[coolani]

I guess different model versions have different problems. Not each N8 or other belle devices are affected so much. This is why nokia is not bothered to address the issue on priority basis or at all, may be.I think I should stop checking out this discussion board. Don't see any hope.

[jake20]

Here is a prime example of the problem,

My pictures produced appear to be small 3MP images that are blown up to 9-12MP size, even thought my phone is set to 9MP.

They look good when scaled down to fit your screen, but when you view at actual size or attempt to zoom in at all, they are a total mess, like they are only 1-3MP images.

Here is an example shot i took.

[coolani]

Wish Nokia people see this. But i'm still not sure they will find any problem with the image. I doubt they even want to.