Pentax K-30 review

Pentax has produced a string of superb consumer SLRs in recent years, and the K-30 raises the bar yet again. Its price puts it in direct competition with the Canon EOS 650D, but various features position it closer to more expensive cameras such as the Canon EOS 60D.

The viewfinder uses a pentaprism rather than a pentamirror for a brighter view, and the 0.92x magnification and 100 per cent field of view are bigger than any other optical viewfinder at this price. It's hard to exaggerate how much of a difference this makes – it's like upgrading from a 19in to a 24in monitor. That's us pretty much sold already, but it gets better.

These images were shot through the optical viewfinders of the Pentax K-30 and Sony A550, and demonstrate how much bigger the K-30's viewfinder really is
There are dual command dials on the front and back for direct access to shutter speed and aperture controls. An electronic spirit level is built in, with feedback appearing either on the screen or through the viewfinder window. As with all of Pentax's SLRs, optical stabilisation is built into the sensor, so it's available regardless of which lens is used. The most surprising feature is a weather-resistant body, and the 18-55mm AL WR lens we tested is weather-resistant too (make sure you get this kit lens, as it's only £20 more than the standard model without the WR suffix). This is an extremely useful feature that's never been available before on an SLR at this price.

It lacks a passive LCD screen for displaying shooting settings, which is common on upmarket SLRs such as the 60D. It also lacks an articulated screen, which various other £600 SLRs have. Still, this helps to keep the bulk down. The lack of an HDMI port is less excusable, and the 410-shot battery life from its slim lithium ion battery is well below average. It can run off four AA batteries with the help of the optional battery holder (part number D-BH109, £30 inc VAT). You may as well buy a spare lithium ion battery for £45.
This is a striking camera, especially in the metallic blue finish we were sent for testing. The viewfinder hump and pop-up flash protrude to a sharp edge at the front. If we were feeling kind, we'd describe its appearance as sporty. On other days, we'd call it ugly. It's extremely comfortable to hold, though, with a substantial moulded handgrip and a contoured back for the thumb to rest on. The viewfinder only protrudes a few millimetres from the back of the camera, and we found it difficult to press an eye close enough to cut out light in our peripheral vision. Meanwhile, the SD compartment door made it a little tricky to grasp cards to remove them.

The controls are a triumph. We appreciate having dual command dials in manual mode, but they really excel in program mode. Here, adjusting the front command dial instantly takes the camera into aperture-priority mode, while adjusting the rear dial switches to shutter-priority. Pressing the green button beside the shutter release returns to program mode. It's simple and brilliant, and a massive improvement on the less prescriptive program shift concept. It's also really useful to be able to switch to priority modes directly from the current exposure settings rather than the last-used manual settings.
The other controls are as good as we've seen at this price. There aren't a huge number of buttons but Pentax has made the most of them, combining self-timer, continuous shooting and exposure bracketing into single drive mode button, for example. We particularly like how pressing ISO gives access not just to the manual ISO setting but also to the upper and lower values of the Auto ISO mode. It takes about a second to change this, whereas it can take up to ten seconds on Canon and Nikon's SLRs. HDR options are buried in the menu but the scene presets offer an alternative, quicker route to HDR shooting. We also really like the ability to shoot JPEGs but retrospectively save the last shot as a RAW image too. The lack of a depth-of-field preview button might frustrate some people, though.

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Canon PowerShot SX50 HS review

Ultra-zoom cameras are incredibly versatile, taking wide-angle, telephoto and macro photography in their stride. The best models cope well in low light too. Last year's Canon SX40 HS led the field for image quality, particularly in low light, but narrowly missed out on an award because of its trundling performance.

This year's SX50 HS ups the ante with a record-breaking 50x zoom lens – the biggest ever to grace a stills camera. More importantly to us, it's also significantly faster in general use, taking 1.8 seconds between shots. That's a big improvement on the SX40 HS's 2.8 seconds but still a long way off 0.6 seconds of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ200.

Continuous mode is seriously fast, capturing 10 shots at up to 14fps in our tests. However, this performance is only available in a scene preset with barely any control over the camera, and it took six seconds to save these shots before we regained control of the camera. Most situations require more sustained performance, but the best it could manage outside of this scene preset was 1.9fps, or just 0.9fps with continuous autofocus. The screen was blank for most of the time between each shot, which made it virtually impossible to track moving subjects.
It's much more capable when shooting sedentary subjects. The 1200mm maximum focal length (35mm equivalent) let us frame subjects that we could barely see with the naked eye. Using such a huge magnification while shooting handheld meant we often lost track of the subject, so we really appreciated the button on the side of the lens to zoom out quickly and temporarily to help locate it again.

The rest of the controls and well laid out, with a dedicated button for moving the autofocus point and a custom button that can be assigned to one-click white balance calibration. There's no button to toggle between the screen and electronic viewfinder, though. Instead, this is achieved by pressing the Display button twice, which felt too longwinded. Then again, the electronic viewfinder's small size and low 202,000-dot resolution meant we didn't have much of an urge to use it. The LCD screen is a little smaller than usual, too, at 2.8 inches, but its resolution is sharper than the SX40 HS's.
Video capture is at 1080p at 24fps. Quality in our tests was excellent, and we're amazed at how effective the optical stabilisation was at keeping handheld shots steady, even at the full zoom extension. Details weren't quite as sharp as from the FZ200, though, and low-light clips were noisier. It also lacks the FZ200's mic input and comprehensive manual control over video exposures. Clips are limited to around 16 minutes and slow-motion clips are at VGA resolution. The FZ200 is undoubtedly the better video camera.

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Nikon D600 review

A full-frame SLR is something most amateur photographers quietly dream about. With massive viewfinders, professional-grade controls and sumptuous image quality, it's easy to see why they cost four times as much as consumer SLRs. However, there aren't many amateur photographers who can blow over £2,000 on a camera.

The dream becomes a little more real with the arrival of the D600. Currently available for £1,500, it's the cheapest full-frame digital SLR to date. However, the similar Canon EOS 6D is arriving imminently and the more upmarket D800 has already been discounted to £1,920 at Amazon. This is an exciting time to be on the market for a full-frame SLR, but choosing one won't be easy.

Inevitably, there are some downgrades in comparison to the D800, but very few that we're upset about. For us, the biggest is the move from a 51-point to a 39-point autofocus system, nine of which are cross-type. That's still a lot of points, but they're packed together a little more tightly than on the D800 and don't stretch across the frame quite as much as we'd like. It's still a sophisticated autofocus system, though, with options to expand the active area to a group of nine or 21 points, plus a 3D tracking mode that follows subjects around the frame.

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Nikon 1 J2 review

In an age of me-too electronic gadgets, it's great to find some genuine diversity among compact system cameras (CSCs). The Sony NEX range leads the pack for low noise, Olympus and Panasonic offer fast performance and the biggest choice of lenses, while Samsung NX cameras excel for image detail and Wi-Fi functions.

The Nikon 1 system's niche is harder to define. As with last year's Nikon J1, the J2 scores highly for style and it keeps the controls simple to avoid intimidating casual users, but these are hardly unique traits. Meanwhile, Nikon makes a big deal about these cameras' performance, but its 1.4-second shot-to-shot time is nothing special.
Its continuous mode is more unusual, though, shooting at up to 60fps, and there are various tricks to get the most from this speedy performance. Even more unusual is that Nikon puts these performance-enhanced shooting modes centre stage by including them on the mode dial at the expense of traditional exposure modes and scene presets. These are available, along with ISO speed, white balance and all the other controls we'd expect, but only via tedious menu trawling.

The Smart Photo Selector mode takes 20 photos in quick succession and saves what it thinks are the best five, based on facial expression, composition and focus. It's even able to start buffering photos while the shutter button is half pressed, reducing the likelihood of missing a crucial moment. It's hard to gauge how successfully it judges these criteria without seeing the shots it rejects, but regardless, it's a great idea that works well in practice. Simply having five shots to choose from greatly increases the chances of a winning photo. It's worth noting that the camera uses fast shutter and ISO speeds to allow it to capture frames at a fast rate. This can lead to noisier images than when shooting in Auto mode, although on the upside it also minimises the chances of motion blur.

Smart Photo Selector tends to push the ISO speed up – as a result these skin tones are a little mottled but it's not too objectionable - click to enlarge
Motion Snapshot captures a two-second 1080p slow-motion video followed by an 8-megapixel photo. These play back in the camera with saccharine music in what Nikon describes as a "living image". However, the files themselves are silent and there's no obvious way to share living images. Longer slow motion video clips are available via the Movie mode, recorded at 400fps or 1200fps for 1/13- or 1/40-speed playback, but they stop recording after five seconds and the resolution is disappointingly low.

The main video mode is more successful, recording at 1080p for up to 20 minutes. Picture and sound quality were both superb, autofocus was responsive and completely silent, and priority and manual exposure modes are available.

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Fujifilm FinePix F800EXR review

We're big fans of Fujifilm's EXR series of cameras, and all the more so since they sprouted ultra-zoom lenses. The competition is catching up for image quality in low light, though. While the budget Fujifilm Finepix F660EXR earned itself a five-star review, the Fujifilm Finepix F770EXR couldn't match the all-round appeal of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ25.

Fujifilm has just one new model this time around, but with features taken from the F770EXR and a price that has already been discounted to around £230, it looks like a promising pocket ultra-zoom.
The F800EXR includes Wi-Fi – a first for a Fujifilm camera. With the help of accompanying free apps for iOS and Android, it can send photos to smartphones and tablets and use these devices' GPS radios to tag photos. It's a clever idea. Cameras tend to be turned on and off regularly, which disrupts GPS tracking, whereas a phone app can keep tracking constantly. The implementation is clumsy, though, requiring lots of finger ballet on both the phone and camera each time we wanted to update our position. The F770EXR's built-in GPS worked much more neatly.

Here's the iOS app in action
Transferring photos from camera to phone proved to be fairly arduous too. The camera creates a Wi-Fi network for the phone to join, but it often gave up waiting and closed down the connection before we managed to transfer anything. A little persistence usually paid off, though. It's great to be able to take a photo and immediately post it on Facebook without having to resort to a smartphone's inferior camera. This is going to become a must-have feature for all digital cameras.

Otherwise, the F800EXR appears to be identical to the F770EXR. That means a range of clever shooting modes to minimise noise or expand the dynamic range for better highlight and shadow detail. Priority and manual exposure modes are included, but not manual focus, and it's not possible to move the autofocus point. There are two function buttons for quick access to key settings, except that certain key settings such as white balance and raw mode are only available by delving through the main menu.

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Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH3 review

The Panasonic GH3 is the company's latest flagship Micro Four Thirds camera, and it's much more than a revamped Panasonic GH2. With its larger, weather-sealed magnesium alloy body, vast array of buttons and dials, optional battery grip, PC sync socket for triggering external flashes and four-figure body-only price, it's aimed at a more demanding user than any compact system camera (CSC) that has gone before it.

Buy it with the new 12-35mm f/2.8 weather-sealed lens and it will set you back £1,995 including VAT. That's more than the magnificent Nikon D600 costs with its kit lens. Is the GH3, with a sensor that's just a quarter the size (by surface area), really able to compete?

HANDLING

The answer is an emphatic yes. The GH3 looks, feels and behaves like a professional camera. It doesn't have the same low-light capabilities, but it has its own strengths that make it an extremely compelling alternative to the D600.
The taller body and more substantial handgrip compared to the GH2 are big boosts to ergonomics, and it includes many more physical controls. There are dedicated buttons for white balance, ISO speed, exposure compensation, AE Lock, five customisable Fn buttons, dual command dials and a rear wheel.

The dual dials are used in tandem to good effect. Direct access to shutter speed, aperture and exposure compensation (depending on the exposure mode) is the most obvious example, but we also appreciated being able to adjust the manual ISO speed and the Auto ISO range via the dual dials. The sculpted shape on the rear of the camera makes it a little tricky to perform full revolutions on the rear wheel, though. We accidentally popped the card slot door a few times, but these are our only complaints regarding ergonomics.
The 1.7-million dot electronic viewfinder is only a little smaller than the D600's full-frame optical viewfinder, and being electronic, it can overlay lots of useful information. Meanwhile, the 3in screen offers significant advantages over the D600's, being both articulated and touch-sensitive. The menus benefit from touch operation, and it's extremely useful for moving the autofocus point.

Autofocus is spectacularly quick for a contrast-detect system. It delivered 4fps shooting with continuous autofocus, increasing to 5.6fps with fixed focus. When saving JPEGs to a fast SDHC card, it kept these speeds going until the card was full. The only caveat is that noise reduction at ISO 3200 and higher sensitivities is more processor-intensive, so continuous shooting slowed to 2.2fps after 32 frames. Raw shooting slowed to 1.9fps after 23 frames, regardless of the ISO speed. With just 0.4 seconds between shots in normal use, performance is comfortably a match for the D600. It was faster in a few areas, such as when it let us carry on shooting while the camera merged HDR shots in the background.

WI-FI AND APPS

Wi-Fi is built in, and it's the most sophisticated implementation we've seen to date. The camera creates an encrypted network for an iOS or Android device to join, whereupon the free Lumix Link app becomes a comprehensive remote control for the camera. The app's Live Control tab receives a VGA live view feed, which can be touched to move the autofocus point. It's suspended while the camera is recording video, though, dashing our hopes to use an iPad as a remote monitor. There's control over everything from exposure and white balance settings to autofocus mode, aspect ratio and video codec, although they could be quicker to access.

Here's the Android app on a smartphone ...

... and the iOS app running on an iPad
The Playback tab shows thumbnails or full-screen previews, and photos can be transferred to the phone or tablet at various resolutions. A Location Log tab uses the phone or tablet's GPS facilities to geotag photos, but we weren't able to get this to work. Browsing photos on an HTC phone didn't work either, but both the Android and iOS apps worked faultlessly in Live Control mode. We're yet to see any camera's Wi-Fi functions work exactly as advertised, but this one shows more promise than most.

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Canon PowerShot G15 review

Now that compact system cameras (CSCs) are available for as little as £350, is anyone going to buy a conventional compact camera that costs over £500? Canon clearly thinks so, but then, the G15 doesn't bear much resemblance to most compact cameras.
It's built around a 1/1.7in sensor – smaller than CSC sensors but bigger than the ones used in most other compacts. It sits behind a wide-aperture lens, at f/1.8 for wide-angle shots and f/2.8 for telephoto. Together, the sensor size and wide-aperture lens are a potent combination for maintaining high image quality in low light.

The G15 isn't the only camera with this combination of sensor and lens. It has some formidable opponents in the forms of the Panasonic LX7 and Fujifilm X10. The G15 is marginally the heaviest of the three but its chunky body inspires confidence for build quality. We'd be more worried about the floor than the camera in the event of a fall. There's just enough shape to the textured handgrip to sit securely in the hand, so hopefully it won't be slipping through fingers too often.

This is one of very few compact cameras to incorporate an optical viewfinder – a crucial feature for long-sighted people who struggle with LCD screens, and useful when shooting in bright light when the screen is hard to see. The viewfinder zooms in tandem with the lens, but it's a small, blurry view that's heavily cropped compared to what the sensor sees. The viewfinder on the Fujifilm X10 is much better quality. The G15's screen is much better with its sharp 922,000-dot resolution, but it's disappointing that it doesn't share the older G12's articulated design.
This chunky camera affords lots of room for controls. There's a wheel and command dial for controlling shutter speed and aperture in manual exposure mode, plus a dedicated exposure compensation dial. The latter encouraged us to adjust the exposure much more often than with cameras that require a button press to bring exposure compensation up on the screen. With dedicated buttons for AE Lock, ISO speed, autofocus point, metering mode and an option to assign white balance to a customisable button, there's little reason to reach for the menu.

Drive mode is one reason, though. We wonder whether Canon chose to hide it away in a menu because the G15’s continuous performance isn't much to get excited about. It managed 1.8fps for JPEGs, 1fps for raw and just 0.8fps when updating autofocus between each shot. It doesn't compare well to the Panasonic LX7's 5fps with updating autofocus. Canon tries to make up for it with a scene preset that captures 10 shots in a second, but with a blank screen during capture and six seconds to recover, for us the compromises outweigh the benefits. General shot-to-shot times are on the slow side, too, at 2.3 seconds in our tests. The LX7 and X10 were almost three times as fast. At least the G15's flash refresh times are reasonably nippy, at 3.1 seconds at full flash power.

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Samsung EX2F review

When we're contemplating paying a lot of money for a premium product, we don't want to be forced to make compromises. With that in mind, the EX2F looks promising. Its oversized 1/1.7in sensor distinguishes from cheaper cameras, and its f/1.4 lens is as bright as you'll find on a compact camera. There's comprehensive manual control, 10fps continuous shooting, a hotshoe for an external flashgun, a 3in fully articulated screen and integrated Wi-Fi. No other compact camera can match this line-up of features.

The models that come close are a capable bunch, though, including the Fujifilm X10 with its sumptuous image quality and the Panasonic LX7, our current favourite premium compact camera for all-round appeal.
While the EX2F compares well on paper, there's a lack of attention to detail that makes it less rewarding to use. It should be well suited to photographic tinkerers with its front command dial, rear wheel, AE Lock button and drive mode dial. However, there are no dedicated buttons for exposure compensation, ISO speed or white balance. These are available via a Fn button, but navigating the 15 options that reside here isn't as fast as using single-function buttons, especially since the Fn menu doesn't respond while photos are being saved.

The rear wheel is used to navigate across these 15 options while the front dial adjusts the selected setting. However, it doesn't register quick spins of the dial properly, only adjusting the setting by a small amount, so large changes are annoyingly slow to make. For example, going from a 30-second to a 1/4,000-second shutter speed took 32 spins of the dial. The same dial is assigned to shutter speed duties by default in shutter-priority and manual modes, and performing the same task here took just four spins.

Shot-to-shot performance was pretty quick at 1.1 seconds for JPEGs, but raw mode was slower and quite erratic, averaging 2.4 seconds. The 10fps continuous mode lasted for 10 frames – a fairly typical achievement for this class of camera – but the slower 5.5fps and 3fps modes are also limited to 10 frames. All three modes took nine seconds to recover before being ready to shoot again, and they all showed a blank screen during capture. Continuous and raw modes can't be used together.
Other niggling issues include the lack of an orientation sensor, so portrait-shaped photos must be rotated manually. The 240-shot battery life might not last a day's use, and in-camera charging means you can't charge one battery while using another.

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Canon PowerShot S110 review

The S110 is part of an elite group of compact cameras with oversized sensors, wide-aperture lenses and manual controls. They're designed to appeal to keen photographers who want something that's more portable and discrete than an SLR but more capable than a budget compact camera. However, these people are increasingly turning to compact system cameras (CSCs), which offer genuine SLR quality in borderline-pocket-sized forms.

It looks like Canon has found another group of people to target the S110 at; with so many people carrying smartphones everywhere they go, a dedicated camera needs to offer a significant jump in quality in order to justify its existence. The S110 delivers that jump, and thanks to integrated Wi-Fi, its photos needn't be locked inside the camera until you get home.
The camera creates an encrypted network for a smartphone or tablet to join, and the CameraWindow app for iOS and Android makes it easy to browse photos, view them full-screen and transfer them to the phone or tablet at a choice of resolutions. The app can also keep a log of the phone's GPS position, and by cross-referencing against the time photos were taken, it can retrospectively geo-tag photos stored in the camera's SD card. This isn't as seamless as having GPS built into the camera, as the older S100 does, but syncing this GPS data between phone and camera was a lot easier than on the Fujifilm F800EXR.
One advantage to having GPS tracked by a phone rather than the camera is that the location is tracked constantly. GPS cameras often spend a couple of minutes calculating the position each time they're switched on. However, we found that leaving the app running depleted our Android phone's battery faster than normal. Phones that require daily charging might not last a whole day. Battery life of the camera is a concern, too, quoted at 200 shots per charge. Extensive use of the Wi-Fi functions will reduce it further.

Browsing images on the camera via the Android app
The Android app worked faultlessly in our tests, but we had less success with the iOS app running on a third-generation iPad. The Wi-Fi connection worked fine but the app refused to communicate with the camera. Canon's UK press office assured us that the iOS app has no known issues, but we spotted a few user reviews on the Apple App Store stating that the app had stopped working since upgrading from iOS5 to iOS6. Whatever the reason, we hope it's just an isolated, temporary glitch.
If you can wait until you're home to transfer photos, there's an option to connect to a home network, whereupon the camera appears in My Computer for a selected computer. This worked without any need to install software on the PC, and it was a revelation after years of scrabbling around with card readers and cables. It's also possible to make a direct connection to another Wi-Fi Canon camera or Canon printer, although we weren't able to test this.

Otherwise, the S110 is very similar to the Canon Powershot S100 it replaces. There's a 12-megapixel, 1/1.7in sensor and a 5x zoom lens with a bright f/2 aperture for wide-angle shots but a gloomy f/5.9 at the telephoto end of the zoom. There isn't a huge amount of room on the camera for physical controls, but with a wheel on the back and another encircling the lens, adjusting exposure settings is pretty quick. One welcome improvement over the S100 is that the screen is touch sensitive. This makes it much quicker to move the autofocus point, and some menus are a little quicker to navigate too. Changing scene presets was a little slow, though, as the on-screen graphics didn't keep up with our input. This camera doesn't have the immediacy of the Canon G15's controls but it's better than most ultra-compact cameras.

Sadly, there's not much immediacy to its performance either. It took a pedestrian 2.4 seconds between shots in general use, while continuous mode ran at 1.9fps. These are well below average for a £350 camera, but while SLR owners might be frustrated, it's probably fast enough for more casual users.

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Samsung Galaxy Camera review

Samsung's cameras are often highly innovative, but the Samsung Galaxy Camera is by far the most ground-breaking example we've seen in a long time. It's essentially an Android smartphone that's equipped with a substantial 21x zoom lens and a 16-megapixel 1/2.3in sensor.

It's well specified as a smartphone, with a 4.8in, 1280x720-pixel LCD, quad-core 1.4GHz processor, 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS. It runs Android 4.1, with full access to the Google Play app store. You can use this camera to check emails, update your Facebook status and listen to Spotify – there's even a headphone socket. It can't take calls, though. Perhaps that's because holding a camera to your ear looks pretty stupid, but it does mean that the Galaxy Camera won't replace your phone.

Seeing it in the flesh, we were immediately struck by how big it is. With its 4.8in screen, it's inevitably much larger than most compact cameras that use 3in screens. Meanwhile, the 21x zoom lens means it's chunkier than any smartphone, at 35mm from lens to screen. Even at its thinnest point it's still 19mm thick – more than double the Samsung Galaxy S3's 9mm profile. It's more than twice as heavy, too, at 300g.

Samsung quotes the battery life as up to 280 hours standby – there's no stated battery life in shots. That makes sense, though, as this camera is likely to be doing much more than taking photos. The flipside is that the battery will probably run out faster than usual. We managed to take 134 photos and four videos over three days from a single charge, although that was with minimal use of the Wi-Fi and 3G functions. With heavy use it might need daily charging.
As this is an Android device, pressing the power button puts it to sleep rather than turns it off. Waking it and taking a photo is quick at around three seconds. It returns to the last-used app, though, so it took five seconds to wake it and launch the camera app when we had been checking Facebook during our last session.

It doesn't stay in sleep mode indefinitely. It drops into a Fast Power-on mode after one hour (by default), whereupon it took six seconds to switch on and take a photo. That's still reasonably quick, but after 24 hours of inactivity the camera fully powers down. It then took 26 seconds to switch on and shoot, which potentially means missing a crucial shot. This rather complex power management is one downside of fusing camera and smartphone technology.

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Sony NEX-5R review

The Sony NEX-5R replaces the award-winning Sony NEX-5N - one of our top recommendations throughout 2012, thanks to its svelte magnesium alloy body and stunning photo and video quality. The outgoing 5N has had some strong competition to contend with, though. No other CSC at this price has beaten it for photo quality but the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX1 bettered it for performance, hands-on control and the quality and choice of compatible lenses.

The new Sony NEX-5R addresses many of the 5N's weaknesses without diminishing any of its strengths. There's a new Function button and command dial for quicker access to photographic settings. Pressing the button reveals six customisable functions, which can be picked from a list of 15. With ISO speed, drive mode and exposure compensation available separately via the navigation pad, there's little reason to visit the main menu in normal use.

Updated controls alone make the 5R superior to the 5N
The old 5N can be configured to provide a similar set of controls, but only by reassigning the centre button on the pad, thereby losing quick access to the shooting mode. On the 5R, the centre button brings up a virtual mode dial on the screen, which is adjusted by spinning the wheel on the back of the camera. It's not quite as effective as a dedicated physical mode dial but it's a big improvement on the 5N.
The 3in wide-aspect screen is tilts up and down as before, but now it can tilt up by 180 degrees for self-portraits. Doing so automatically enables a three-second self-timer, so you've plenmty of time to steady your arm and gurn before the shutter goes. Various other CSCs have articulated screens but none are as petite as this one.

The new articulated screen is great for self portraits
Otherwise, the 5R and 5N are virtually indistinguishable – and that's fine by us. It's an extremely handsome camera, and surprisingly comfortable to hold and use considering its diminutive design. Our only lingering concern is the detachable flash unit, which isn't as tidy as an integrated flash and is likely to be left at home as a result. Then again, building a flash into the camera would inevitably make it bigger – as demonstrated by the Sony NEX-F3.

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LG Optimus 4X HD review

LG’s Optimus 4X HD is the company’s new flagship handset, and it’s certainly not messing around with the specifications. There’s a 4.7in 1,280x720 IPS screen, an Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset with a 1.5GHz quad-core processor and an eight-megapixel camera with a backlit sensor. This puts it up against top-of-the-range phones – such as the HTC One X and award-winning Samsung Galaxy S3.

The 4X HD doesn’t look as fancy as the One X and S3; instead of a curved screen and rounded pebble shape you get a more standard rounded rectangle. It’s easy to maintain a solid hold on the phone thanks to a textured back, and two parallel chromed plastic ridges around the edge provide grip for your thumb and fingers. The outside of the phone is sparse, with just a power button, volume rocker, headphone jack and Micro USB port; you don’t get a dedicated camera button, and have to pop the back cover off to get at the microSD card slot.

The 4.7in screen takes up most of the front of the phone, and it’s an impressive display. There’s no AMOLED display, as on the Galaxy S3, but it is a superior IPS-type LCD. There’s slightly less contrast than on the Galaxy S3, but the operating system, photos and videos still look great; the screen is definitely a match for the IPS model on the HTC One X. The 1,280x720 resolution is the same as that of the One X and Galaxy S3, and gives a pixel density of 313 pixels-per-inch – comparable to the 312 of the One X and 306 of the Galaxy S3. You can’t see the pixels, at any rate, and we can’t imagine anyone having any complaints about the display.

LG has heavily customised the handset’s Android 4.0 operating system. Many of the icons are LG’s own, and they’re big, bright and colourful, and work well with the large, high-resolution screen. Like stock Android 4.0, the main app screen is divided into Apps and Widgets, but the 4X HD also gives you a separate section for the apps you have downloaded.
There are some useful preinstalled apps. LG’s own video player has a preview which lets you scan through videos with a picture-in-picture box without leaving your current place. You can also pinch-to-zoom and pan around while a video is playing. The SmartShare DLNA app lets you play back media files stored on DLNA servers, and also control playback on other DLNA devices from the phone. The only app we didn’t get on with was LG’s own email app; it wouldn’t let us connect to our company Exchange server due to a problem with SSL certificates – most Android email apps have the option to accept all SSL certificates, so getting around our Exchange server’s quirks, but this is absent from LG’s app.

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Sony Xperia T review

Considering it's the phone 007 will be using in Skyfall later this year, it should come as no surprise that the Xperia T is a high-end smartphone that's packed with features. It’s a formidable high-end device on paper, with a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 4.6in HD display and 13-megapixel camera, but specifications alone won't be enough to give Sony the all-conquering handset it has been seeking since buying out Ericsson earlier in the year.
Rejecting the angular lines seen in the Sony Xperia S, the Xperia T instead opts for a more textured rear and curved edges. These help it sit comfortably in your hand, despite the phone’s size and weight – at 139g it’s heavier than Apple, HTC and Samsung’s flagship phones and at 9.4mm it’s thicker too. Sat side by side, the Xperia certainly sticks out, but it’s hardly an ugly duckling. Our review unit came in two-tone sliver and black, though we much prefer the all-black version of the handset.

The machined metal power, volume and camera buttons are a nice touch, although their positioning feels too low down the right side of the device – you have to stretch your thumb awkwardly or hold the phone at an angle to reach them if you’re right handed, although it’s less of a problem for lefties.
The entire unit is sealed, so there’s no way to remove the battery, but there is at least a MicroSD card slot next to the MicroSIM card slot for future expansion if you use up the 16GB of internal storage. Unfortunately it’s covered by a rather flimsy plastic flap that might get damaged if caught when pulling the phone out of a pocket or bag. The headphone jack on the top and microUSB port on the left side are both uncovered - the latter also doubles as an HDMI output using an MHL adaptor. Wireless connectivity includes 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, DLNA support, Wi-Fi Direct and NFC.

Depending how you hold your phone these buttons are either perfectly placed or awkward to use

Sony has used on-screen buttons rather than physical ones, meaning the 4.6in LCD display takes up the entire front face of the phone. It’s a beauty, thanks to the 1,280x720 resolution and Sony’s own Bravia mobile engine display tweaks which improve image and video playback by sharpening pictures, increasing contrast and removing digital noise. It works brilliantly, rendering text sharply, giving icons a crisp appearance and really showing off your photos. It can be a little tricky to see in bright sunlight, and the screen itself is a magnet for dust and fingerprints, but these aren’t major issues.

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Nokia Lumia 820 review

The Lumia 820 is Nokia's mid-range Windows 8 phone for this year, coming a rung down from the range-topping Lumia 920. It's still a top-specification handset, though. You get an AMOLED screen, 4G connectivity and Microsoft's latest mobile operating system - Windows Phone 8.

The Lumia 820 differs significantly from the 920 in terms of design. Instead of the Lumia 920's unibody and convex screen, you get a more traditional flat screen and pop-off rear cover, under which you'll find the battery, SIM and microSD card slots. The memory card slot is interesting; this is the first Windows Phone handset we've seen with expandable memory. The Lumia 920 didn't really need any more space thanks to its built-in 32GB of storage, but the Lumia 820 only has 8GB of integrated storage.
With 32GB microSDHC cards costing as little as £14 and 16GB models available for £7, you don't have to worry too much about the Lumia 820's small amount of built-in storage. Fitting the cards is another matter, as removing the rear cover is a fiddly process. You have to peel back the top-right corner, then get a grip with your fingers and snap it off backwards. The cover bends significantly during this process, but our fears about it breaking were unfounded; however, our thumb did leave a small chip in the cover, which was a shame.

The UK Lumia 820 ships with a wireless charging-capable cover
You can buy different covers for the Lumia 820, which add different functions to your phone. The UK version comes with a wireless charging cover to use with Nokia's Wireless Charging Plate (DT-900RD, £55 from www.expansys.com), but you will also be able to buy a ruggedized shell to make your phone tougher or cheaper fashion shells to give your Lumia 820 more personality.
The Lumia 820's 4.3in screen is only slightly smaller than the 920's 4.5in version, but it has a significantly lower resolution; 800x480 pixels rather than 1,280x768. This leads to a pixel density of 217ppi compared to the Lumia 920's 332ppi. You can see the pixels on the 820's screen, and text isn’t quite as sharp, but it's still an impressive display. Much of this is down to the fact it's an AMOLED screen, so has the deep blacks and punchy colours we've come to associate with this technology. The Lumia 820's AMOLED screen seems to use less power than the Lumia 920's IPS model, too, as the Lumia 820 lasted an hour and a half longer than the 920 in our continuous video playback test. The Lumia 820's screen isn’t made of Corning Gorilla Glass like the 920's, so is likely to be more susceptible to scratches.

It's an AMOLED screen, but you don't get Gorilla Glass
The flexibility of Windows Phone 8's interface means a lower-resolution screen isn’t a particular problem. You can now resize the operating system's Live Tiles, making them small, medium or large depending on how much information you want them to show. Apps that don’t show any supplemental Live information, such as Internet Explorer, can safely be made as small as possible, which leaves more room for your info-rich Photos and People tiles.
There have been some tweaks to the People app, too, namely the addition of Rooms. We cover this in detail in our Lumia 920 review, but in short it means that you can create various Rooms, add contacts to them and then elect to share various bits of information with everyone in that Room, whether it's messages, calendar appointments, photos or to-do lists.

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HTC Desire X review

While HTC's Desire brand was originally attached to premium smartphones, these days Desire-branded handsets have a distinctly mid-range feel. The Desire X inhabits the crowded sub-£200 SIM-free market, so we were interested to see how it would stand out.

First impressions are, thankfully, good. The Desire X is a smart phone. It's slim and light with a pleasing curved shape, and our review model was the classy white and silver version. We didn't like bending and prying the rear cover off to fit the SIM card and microSD, but it's not like you have to open your phone very often.

We were impressed with the Desire X's screen. It's a 4in model with an 800x480 resolution, and the screen's high contrast makes the phone pleasant to use. HTC has modified Android heavily with its Sense interface, and the customisations tend to polarise opinion. Comparing the Desire X side-by-side with a phone running a stock version of Android 4.0, we felt Sense added to the experience. The replacement icons are big, colourful and detailed, and the main apps screen has buttons to show all your apps or filter them by most frequently used or just those you have installed yourself. The phone has around 950MB free to install apps, and if you add a microSD card you can use a dedicated app to move programs to the memory card and free up internal storage.

Adding a widget to the Desire X
It's also easy to add Widgets, Apps or Shortcuts to various functions to one of your homescreens; a long press on a spare bit of a homescreen brings up a menu with a list of items you can add, along with thumbnails of your homescreens at the top so you can see where there's room. A 1GHz dual-core processor is standard for a mid-range smartphone, and this is plenty to run Android 4.0 smoothly. The phone completed the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark in 2077ms, which is what we expect from this kind of processor, and while this isn’t a huge score we found the phone fine for normal web browsing.

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Apple iPhone 5 review

Updated: Now includes Google Maps, and 4G speed test and quality testing
There's a very simple way to describe the Apple iPhone 5: thinner, lighter and a bit taller than the iPhone 4S. While that gets across the general look of the phone, it rather underestimates what's gone into the design to achieve this.
SIZE AND WEIGHT
For starters, Apple has managed to shave 1.4mm of the thickness of its previous phone. When you compare them side-by-side, what Apple has done is immediately obvious. While the iPhone 4S' screen and back bulged out from the side, the iPhone 5 has a flush back, while the screen is barely raised at all.

There's no denying that the iPhone 5 is impressively thin
It's easy to tell the difference is size from photos, but weight's an altogether harder thing to describe. In pure stats, the iPhone 4S weighed 140g, while the iPhone 5 is 28g lighter at just 112g. Trust us, this is a big difference and it's immediately noticeable when you pick the iPhone 5 up: you get the feeling that it simply should weigh more, it's that light.
While the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 are clearly related, there are some cosmetic changes to the new model, which give it a different look and help keep the weight down. Gone is the all-glass rear, replaced instead with an aluminium panel that covers most of back of the phone, bar two glass panels at the top and bottom. We've been told that during manufacturing the rear of the phone is photographed with the aluminium panel in place, so that the best-fitting glass panels can be found. Our review model was certainly well put together, with a flush fitting rear.

A new aluminium back panel gives the iPhone 5 a different look and feel

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