The Nokia Lumia 1020 reigns supreme in terms of still photography in the 2013 smartphone world, it seems, but challengers do keep popping up. In this case the LG G2, with 13MP sensor and OIS, inset into a sleek and large-screened body. It was only natural to compare the cameras of each, in this, part 1 of a two part shootout, though I added a couple of extra reference points to the mix in the older Nokia 808 (sorry, couldn't help myself) and the mainstream Lumia 920. I then shot the same nine scenes and subjects with all four, to place the phone cameras relative to each other.
NFC (Near Field Communications) is something we've only touched on briefly on the All About sites. You know it as a way to pair quickly with compatible Bluetooth accessories and to tap-for-info on an object, but the scope of NFC is widening all the time. In the first of several articles on NFC, I explore the world of NFC tag writing, looking at some common practical uses. Comments welcome if you can think of ways the technology would enhance your life too.
Regular listeners to the 361 Degrees podcast will have heard many times of Rafe's legendary 'six year rule', when referring to smartphone platforms and ecosystems. With Blackberry seemingly imploding before our eyes, with Nokia having been snapped up recently by Microsoft and with Symbian increasingly being forgotten in the marketplace, I thought it worth both expanding on Rafe's rule of thumb and also charting it graphically. A mosquito lives for a week, a hamster for a year or two, smartphone operating systems about six or seven years, and (happily) human beings about 70 to 80 years. Life and death, all in 1000 words? It can only be an All About (sites) editorial....
It's a fair cop, I'm firmly in camera geek territory again here. We see a lot of smartphone camera comparisons online (not least here on the All About sites), but all this talk of optical formats and pixel sizes rather gets in the way of the man in the street understanding the simple physics involved. To help out, I've summarised all available data on smartphone camera sizes and apertures and present the result graphically. So the Lumia 1020 has a 1/1.5" sensor - what does this mean? And how does it affect the ability of the device to gather light? This and much more below...
Having done a number of real world photo comparisons between Nokia's new Lumia 1020 and various competitors, including its own 'predecessor', the Nokia 808 on Symbian, I wanted to break down the word 'oversampling' and try to demonstrate what is - and, particularly - what isn't going on inside each of these camera-toting smartphones and their applications. Where do the photo pixels come from and does it matter which application captures them?
I've handled a broad strokes comparison of the two 41 megapixel camera flagships of the smartphone world before, notably here (when I declared them roughly equal in merit though with very different processing pros/cons) and here (as part of a four way test, but with very similar conclusions), but what I wanted to do here was to push them both to the limits in real world low light situations. Would the benefits of Optical Image Stabilisation outweigh that of a larger sensor? Would a BSI sensor compensate for a smaller Xenon flash? Is the hardware oversampling engine from the Nokia 808 missed on the Lumia 1020?
As a regular compiler of smartphone 'top 5's in The Phones Show, I find myself regularly finding myself happiest at least one generation from the current bleeding edge of technology, somewhat oddly. Causing me to stop and muse - what you might not have considered is that there are far more benefits than disadvantages in doing this, not least of all in helping your wallet out a little.
A couple of days ago, I pitted the Nokia 808 against the new Lumia 1020 directly, concluding that the latter's images were more processed but did have the advantage of being more immediately attractive to non-purists. In addition, there was the flexibility of the 'live' photos (of which more in our dedicated AAWP review part). My gut feeling is that these devices from Nokia are some way ahead of the chasing pack, so why not put this to the test?
In advance of the rest of our Nokia Lumia 1020 review coverage, I wanted to deliver an answer to the question that just about all of our readers are asking. Specifically, can the Lumia 1020, with its slightly smaller (though BSI) sensor and image processing differences, deliver images that are as good as those from the existing Symbian-based Nokia 808?
Yes, an All About review series on the Nokia Lumia 1020 is coming in due course, but let me first squeeze in a quick four way imaging comparison, courtesy of sample shots from four relevant camera-centric smartphones from Matt Miller and his extensive Flickr gallery. As ever, I'll save you the trouble of downloading dozens of JPGs and working out which is which - see below for my crops from the Nokia 808 PureView, the Lumia 1020, the Lumia 925 and the HTC One.
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