In low light conditions, to me iphone4 is superior. In normal light, N9 take better pictures for sure. I think we keep using iphone4 because it is more "reliable", even if the quality is not always the best of the two. Same for videos indoor : we shot two videos at a rock concert, low light condition again, and we see more details on the iphone 4 video, and furthermore the sound is better (not saturated). That does'nt really bother me anyway, when I bought an N9 I knew its camera was not that good, and I don't really need it. Edit : for the color saturation, you get a point. But as far as it's not too surrealistic and you can watch some of your party/holiday pictures, I don't mind. One may bother, but anyway you don't use your phone as a main camera for your best pictures. The phone is useful to capture some quick pictures for the moments you want to keep.
Since 2010, when we upgraded to iP4, we have stopped carrying a separate camera anywhere, as of now our Nikon is carrying dust somewhere at home - we don't even know where. iP4 was that good, so what if it was 5MP... it gave us all the quality shots we needed. Most at par to our digicam if not better. Come 2011, we avoid iP4S (why, it's another matter for discussion) and go for the N9 instead... and boy, did we make a wiser decision, u bet? I've not tasted the 4S myself but my N9 is a marvel, at everything for me, including it's shooting capabilities. What we had with the iP4 the N9 surpassed it leaps & bounds. Yes, we aren't the best photographers in the world, but our N9 shoots wholesome pics, very accurate details, good color separation, great to look at. It not just serves the purpose (for us), but actually does a better job than most of our friend's camphones, including BB, iP4S and the Samsungs/HTCs galore. We don't know why/how, but we've compared them & they (our friends) concur. To us, our N9 remains a pure joy. Besides, it's form factor gets the accolades whenever we flash it, in public. Yes, we do get the random, "oh, is it a Lumia" call lately, but when we say, "no, it's an N9, a much better phone & OS", they go, "wow"! I guess, that's more to us than it's imaging capabilities, though it indeed is a good shooter. No wonder the N8 and 808-Pureview might do a better job, but what we have now, at hand, is good enough. Then, if we really needed to shoot professionally, we'd rather carry a DSLR, won't we? But since we don't need that, didn't as yet, our N9 suffices... And, as I said earlier, surpasses! It's all in our minds... To us our Nokia-N9 rocks, we couldn't have asked for anything better! Qorax