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Nikon Coolpix S800c Hands-on Preview

by Dave Etchells, Mike Tomkins, Roger Slavens and Shawn Barnett
Posted: 08/22/2012

Marking a true watershed in the photo industry, the Android-equipped Nikon Coolpix S800c merges Google's popular mobile operating system with a 16-megapixel, 10x zoom, WiFi-enabled pocket digital camera. The Nikon S800c shares all the benefits of Android 2.3, including the Google Play store, and it has a better sensor than almost any smartphone or tablet on the market; and its 25-250mm lens ensures you can frame your subjects just like you want, whether near or far. Starting at US$350, the Nikon S800c is the first digital camera to have a true operating system for over a decade, and unlike the ill-fated Digita OS, Android is already quite well established. We think it's the first of many OS-enabled digital cameras to come.

The camera industry has long been trying to figure out how to compete with smartphones and tablets -- devices that take pictures, but don't take them nearly as well as most digital cameras. The Coolpix S800c is the first attempt to coexist with smartphones and tablets, and even bypass them completely, uploading photos directly to sharing and storage sites. Some manufacturers have approached the challenge by adding WiFi capabilities to their cameras, allowing photographers to transfer their higher-quality images to smart devices so they can be easily managed and shared via email, texts and social media. But with the Coolpix S800c, Nikon breaks new ground by bringing the smarts into the camera itself. Nikon says they worked closely with Google to optimize the integration between camera and Android system so that photo-minded consumers could get (at least some of) the best of both worlds in one device.

The Nikon S800c's Android system looks and feels like virtually any other Android-based smartphone. You interact with it through a large and bright 3.5-inch OLED on the backside of the camera, which has a capacitive touch screen, as most folks are used to on a smartphone. The Nikon S800c's WiFi connectivity lets you access and upload photos to your social networks, surf the Web and download virtually any applications (including dozens of photo and video apps) from the Google Play store. Nikon told us that it chose Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), not 4.0 or 4.1, for the Nikon S800c because it wasn't as demanding on the CPU and required less RAM.

While it runs Android, it's important to remember that the Nikon Coolpix S800c is at its heart a camera. With a 16-megapixel backside-illuminated CMOS sensor chip, a 10x-wide 25-250mm equivalent NIKKOR zoom lens and an EXPEED C2 processing engine, the Nikon S800c has a decent set of specs, putting its photographic capabilities well ahead of any other smartphone or tablet. It measures just a bit bigger and rounder (4.4 x 2.4 x 1.1 inches) and heavier (6.5 ounces) than a typical Android smartphone. The camera features an internal flash, a continuous-drive mode that captures up to 8 frames per second, and various scene modes and creative filters. Its built-in GPS is a rather standard implementation, but it does have the ability to download and store ephemeris information, meaning it will map your location quickly the next time you power up the camera (this info has to be downloaded manually according to our preliminary information). The camera also shoots Full HD video at 1080p with stereo sound.

Though we only had a short time with the Nikon S800c, we liked what we saw. The touch shutter works very well, and the shutter lag seems pretty short. We also enjoyed the AF/AE touch-focusing system, which set focus properly with a simple touch of the OLED screen. (The AF touch area is limited to about 70% of the total screen area; you can't focus way out on the sides of the frame.)

Though the exposure settings on the prototype we played with seemed somewhat limited, this was probably a prototype issue. Subject tracking also worked reasonably well, but it fared best with distinct color differences. Simple tonal differences weren't enough to keep the Nikon S800c on target. Also it likely couldn't track a very fast-moving subject.

The Nikon S800c has 4GB of built-in storage, with roughly 1.7GB for images, 680MB for apps and presumably the rest for the Android OS. You can add an SD card for additional storage, though it was unclear at press time whether that could also serve as storage for apps and content for Android.

Together but separate. The camera and Android parts of the Nikon S800c exist somewhat separately, so the camera operates in two different modes. When you're taking pictures, you're in Camera mode, and when using the Android apps, you're in Android mode. You switch between the two via touch-controls on the OLED screen, and you have to explicitly switch back to Camera mode before you can take a picture. The shutter button does nothing while in Android mode, which we found a little disconcerting. It doesn't take long to switch from one mode to the other, but we'd worry about missing a key shot if we were off fiddling in Android-land when something interesting happened. Since the penalty of exiting Camera mode could be missed shots, the Nikon S800c asks you to confirm that you want to switch to Android mode, with a second touch of the screen. Switching back to Camera mode requires only a single touch.

The Nikon Coolpix S800c makes a clear division between camera and Android modes. When in the Android Home screen, as shown here, you need to tap the Camera button before your Shutter button comes to life and lets you capture images.

We're frankly a little undecided how to feel about the Camera/Android dichotomy. On the one hand, we really want the camera to feel like a camera when we're shooting with it, and that dictates an entirely different user interface than that employed by Android. On the other hand, we'd like the integration between the two functions to be more seamless, at least to the extent of having the Shutter button override Android functions, to let us snap an image quickly. As with most of our camera evaluations, we'll only know how we feel about the Nikon S800c's user interface once we've had a chance to live with it for a while. We had only a relatively short time with a prototype device.

Having seen early attempts at putting a full-blown operating system in a camera (the Kodak DC260 for one example), an obvious concern was whether the Nikon S800c would be responsive enough, particularly on power-up. Operating systems take a while to wake up and get themselves loaded, but you want a camera to take a picture now, not 15 or 20 seconds later, once it's awakened.

Your Home screen has five pages, and you can swipe through them one at a time, or jump straight to the screen of your choice, as shown in the tiny preview thumbnails.

Nikon dealt with this dilemma quite nicely in the Coolpix S800c. When you power-up the camera, it boots up in plain-Jane camera mode, so it's ready to snap a picture very quickly. (We didn't time this, but it seemed as quick as any other digicam out there.) Once the camera itself is up and running, Android continues to boot in the background, with a slight change in the user interface displayed on the LCD monitor. This is pretty seamless; you don't notice any change in camera functionality, the UI change just lets you know that the Android side is up and ready to go.

Getting your images in sync. Transferring images from the Nikon S800c to your smartphone or tablet proved to be pretty easy. We played around with an early version of an Android photo transfer app that lets the camera connect to an Android phone or tablet; Nikon says there's an iOS version coming a little while after the camera's release.

To connect with a phone or tablet, the Nikon S800c publishes its own WiFi node, which an app running on the smart device then connects to. The first time you connect to a given device, the camera and phone/tablet have to find each other and confirm that they're each talking to who you want them to. This is an Android-to-Android connection; you have to go into the Nikon S800c's Android mode to do it.

WiFi connections are configured and initiated through the Upload app, found by default on the camera's Home screen. Just like on your smartphone, you can delete this shortcut, or move it around the home screen pages. It's also found in the All Apps screen, accessed with the middle of the three buttons at the right of the screenshot.

On the Nikon S800c, you select the Upload app from the Android app screen, while on the phone/tablet side, you choose the "Connect to S800c" app. Select Simple Setup on both, and hit start on each as well. After a few moments, both devices will display a 4-digit number that indicates they're in communication with each other. If the numbers do in fact match, you hit OK on both devices, after which they say "setup complete," with another OK needed to confirm that.

Connecting the Nikon Coolpix S800c to your WiFi-compliant smartphone or tablet couldn't be much simpler.	Simply launch an app on both devices, click to start pairing, and once connected they'll both show an identical 4-digit PIN number.

With the two devices paired in this manner, you then select Start Service on the camera and Connect to Camera on the phone/tablet. After another moment or two, the Nikon S800c will say "Connected to smart device," and thumbnails of all the photos on the camera's card will appear on the smart device's screen. If the devices have been paired previously, you only need to do the Start Service/Connect to Camera part of the process to get going.

With all the Nikon S800c's thumbnails displayed on the smart device, you can rapidly scroll though them with swipes of the finger, just as you'd expect on a typical phone or tablet. Touching an image marks it for transfer, and there are select/deselect all buttons on the bottom of the screen to do what their names suggest. With the images you want transferred selected, you touch the Camera Download button (a little icon of a camera with an arrow pointing down and out of it) at the bottom of the screen, and the images will transfer over to the phone/tablet. We didn't time this transfer, but it seemed pretty quick. It's probably only an 11-megabit "b" type WiFi connection, but that's still a pretty decent amount of bandwidth for moving 16-megapixel images around. Once the images are transferred to the smart device, you'll find them in a new folder inside your Android device's Gallery app. (When the iOS version becomes available, downloaded photos will presumably be in your Photos app.)

This was one small point of disconnect for us: We'd like to be able to immediately browse the smart device's photos from within the transfer app, rather than having to hop out to the Gallery application. Perhaps we'll see this in future versions of the photo-transfer app, but in the meantime, it seemed a little awkward to have to exit and enter another app to see what you just transferred.

Once paired, both devices should remember each other for future connections.	All you'll need to do to transfer images and movies is tap a single button on each device to initiate a connection.

Another, similar niggle, but one that there's probably no getting around: Since there's only one WiFi radio in the typical smart device, you have to exit the camera-transfer app before you can connect to a WiFi network with your phone or tablet and upload the transferred photos to your favorite sharing service. If your smart device has a cell radio in it, that form of transfer is immediately available.

Of course, with the Nikon S800c's Android capabilities, you don't have to transfer your image files to another device if you don't want to. You can connect to a WiFi network or even the WiFi hotspot on your smartphone and post your photos to social sites such as Facebook and Flickr from the camera itself, and you can edit and manage your images with some pretty sophisticated Android photo apps. That's why we think this pairing of a much-better-than-smartphone camera with the Android's OS smarts will make the Nikon S800c a very popular choice when it's released in September.

As well as catering for data transfer to other smart devices, the Coolpix S800c's WiFi connectivity lets you share your masterpieces online--either through social networking apps or the built-in web browser. Of course, the Nikon S800c's 3.5-inch screen is more conducive to apps and games than web browsing, but it happily allows you to check the latest camera reviews straight from your camera itself.

Nikon S800c Technical Info

by Mike Tomkins

Nikon has based the Coolpix S800c digital camera around a sixteen megapixel backside-illuminated CMOS image sensor. BSI sensors are pretty common in phones and tablets these days, but the S800c's 1/2.3-inch sensor is larger. Where phones and tablets typically sport sensors with diagonals of around 3-6mm, the Nikon S800c's sensor has a diagonal just slightly under 8mm. That along with a higher-quality lens than you'd find in typical smart devices should translate to noticeably better image quality, especially in terms of noise handling and low-light sensitivity. The Nikon S800c has a standard sensitivity range of ISO 125 to 1,600 equivalents, with up to ISO 3,200 available in Auto exposure mode.
Smoothly flowing from the Nikon S800c's front deck is a Nikkor-branded 10x optical zoom, yielding 35mm-equivalent focal lengths from 25 to 250mm, a pretty useful range. Maximum aperture is a bit dim, falling from f/3.2 to f/5.8 across the zoom range.	The Nikon S800c retains the company's EXPEED C2 image processor, first seen in late 2010. While it's not the newest chip around, it still allows for eight frames-per-second burst shooting, albeit with a depth of just three shots.
Other burst-mode choices include 60 fps and 120 fps modes; we're currently awaiting confirmation of the resolution. The S800c offers Nikon's Best Shot Selection function, too. This takes a quick burst of images and then sorts the wheat from the chaff automatically. There's also a Multi-shot 16 mode, the sole option on the next page (not shown.)
Ordinarily, the Nikon S800c focuses to 20 inches at wide angle, or 40 inches at telephoto. When Macro mode is enabled--it's available either separately, or using the Close-up scene mode--you can focus as close as just four inches at wide angle. As you'd expect given the telephoto reach, the Nikon S800c's lens includes Nikon's optical VR image stabilization.
You may have noticed quite a few handsome screenshots in this article. That's because the Nikon Coolpix S800c sports an attractive 16:9 aspect, 3.5-inch Organic LED screen with a high resolution of about 819,000 dots. (That's about 273,000 pixels, with each pixel made up of separate red, green and blue dots.)
The display includes a capacitive touch-panel overlay like those on high-end smartphones, rather than the less sensitive resistive touch-panels found on some devices. Since the camera itself has a 4:3 aspect ratio, this leaves plenty of room for soft buttons on the touch screen without obscuring the image itself.
As well as a built-in GPS receiver, the camera can identify its location from nearby visible WiFi networks if it's online.	The Nikon S800c also includes a fixed-position, five-mode flash strobe with red-eye reduction function.
Flash modes include Auto with or without red-eye reduction, fill, slow-sync, and off.
Exposure modes include both Easy and standard Auto, the obligatory Scene mode, a Special Effects mode, Smart Portrait, and Movie. The latter allows capture at up to Full HD (1,920 x 1,080 pixel) resolution with stereo sound.
There are no less than 17 different scene modes to choose from, including an Easy Panorama mode that handles stitching for you automatically, in-camera.
You also get a whopping 18 different special effects that let you do your editing without a PC. As well as those above, these include Toy Camera, Pop, and Super Vivid color filters, Cross Process and Peripheral Darkening functions, and more.
Connectivity options include both high-definition HDMI video output and USB data. The latter supports both PTP and MTP transfer modes.	Power comes from a proprietary EN-EL12 lithium-ion battery pack, nestled alongside the Secure Digital card slot in the camera's base. Battery life is rated at a rather brief 140 shots on a charge, to CIPA testing standards.
There's also a generous 4GB of internal memory in the Nikon S800c. In the US market, 680MB is given over to app storage, and 1.7GB to image storage. The remainder, presumably, is occupied by the Android operating system itself. The Nikon Coolpix S800c goes on sale from September 2012. Pricing is set at around US$350, and two body colors will be offered: white, or black.