The guys over at Recombu.com have done a shootout between some of the best available cameraphones in the market. They have pitted the Apple iPhone4, Nokia N8, Samsung Galaxy S II, Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, and Samsung Omnia 7 all against one another.

Guess who wins, AGAIN?

I won’t bore you with the details, but here is the verdict:

Picking a winner for this test is tricky, no one handset excels at everything and even the less impressive phones will be fine for the odd snapshot.

The Samsung Omnia 7 offers a good range of features, but the shutter seems more sensitive than rivals, leading to more issues with camera shake. Stills just aren’t sharp enough and HD movies are soft with drab colours and more artefacts than rivals.

Sony Ericsson’s equipped the Xperia Arc with a good selection of features, a great screen and a sensor that produces best on test low-light performance. Overall we found stills aren’t as sharp as we’d like and HD movie performance is the worst here, it’s very soft.

The Samsung Galaxy S2 is a solid performer, full HD footage is very sharp, although audio quality isn’t as clear as we’d like. Stills are good, but outclassed by other camera phones here.

We really like the iPhone’s camera. HD movie footage is sharp and smooth, although colour rendition isn’t as natural as the N8, stills are sharp and low light performance is solid. Our main issue is the lack of features, which the iOS 5 update will resolve.

So that leaves the Nokia N8. Stills are consistently sharp with natural colours, it’s even passable in low light. We’re really impressed with HD video performance, footage is sharp, with excellent audio and it handles changes to lighting conditions better than some others. The Nokia N8 might not have won every category, but consistently solid performance with stills and movies makes it our winner.

Overall Winner: Nokia N8

Recombu is not a Symbian/Nokia fan site, so hopefully the Nokia N8 haters will finally spare the rest of us, especially seeing that some of the tests really put the N8 at a disadvantage (the night shot, especially: if you want to test flash, close-ups are the way to go).

For the really, really juicy details, do headover to Recombu’s camera phone shootout.

How many of us remember the days of wacky cameras on phones – producing pictures that could get any camera enthusiast nauseated? Those were the good old days; right? Now, everything’s messed up! We have a new range of mobile phones that produce pictures to die for. The multimedia capabilities (pictures and videos) of our phones have evolved significantly and are still evolving.

The recent addition of HD quality video capture and an increasing number of video editing apps on smartphones is gradually killing the need for a dedicated device for most everyday video needs.

The large storage capacities, geolocation features and wi-fi connectivity, also gives smartphones an edge for video recording.

At the moment, Nokia’s N8 rules the cameraphone world with its 12 Megapixel camera with autofocus, large sensor and Xenon flash. That’s a cameraphone worthy of applause. It WOWs you with its results.

HTC has announced a 16 megapixel camera, but anyone who knows HTC knows that if there is something that the Taiwanese company is absolutely clueless about, it is multimedia (especially audio and cameras). No-one should hold their breath for HTC’s cameras.

When it comes to cameraphones, the guys who have it almost to a fine art are Nokia, Sony Ericson and Samsung.

Other excellent cameraphones include the Sony Ericsson Experia X10 and Xperia Arc, Sony Ericsson Satio, Samsung M8910 Pixon12 (whom the N8 took over from), and Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II. If you really want a stellar cameraphone, you should check these guys out.

So tell me, who really needs a camera (as a single device) besides professional cameramen?

So why pack your bag with a camcorder and an HD quality video phone or with your camera and your high-powered cameraphone? When you can walk into that event with just your phone and record/ capture the beautiful moments you want to see again and again.

I have spent the last few weeks talking about the Android OS, and how it is the best thing that happened to mobile phones since the iPhone Honestly, while Palm’s Web OS has a lot of eye candy, reviews coming in suggest that it has some catching up to do with Android.

Back to topic, there can be no doubt to my readers that my new-found love is Android, after years with Symbian. Still, Symbian has its strengths, the strongest (though not so significant) being that it is a more mature OS. But that is a story for another day.

So, now that I have chosen the path of Android, is there any reason why I would get a Symbian device now?

Yes; if I needed a top-notch camera on my smartphone, I would get a Symbian device at this point in time. It is not because Symbian is better than Android in imaging capabilities. It is simply because Nokia makes some of the best camera phones out there, and Nokia makes the majority of Symbian devices.

Last week, ‘Dayo and I put the venerable-but-still-very-much-in-the-game Nokia E90 to use for imaging and video, and we were still awed by the quality of shots and clips we got from this device.

By the way, I still hold to my earlier position that the Nokia E90 is arguably still the best all-rounder. That guy rocks! I just wish Nokia would revamp that user interface.

Nokia has several other Symbian devices with amazing imaging capabilities. Until other manufacturers like Samsung and LG (both of whom are strong contenders in the camera game) roll out their Android phones, the Android platform currently has no competitors against Symbian when it comes to cameraphones.

It sure didn’t help that the first Android devices were from HTC – well known for less-than-stellar cameras on their devices.