Steve tests Lumia 920 video capture - but the 808 is still top of the heap

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Over on our sister site, All About Windows Phone, I've been testing video capture on the Nokia Lumia 920 - and drawing a few conclusions. You can see my video montage below, along with a few comparative comments. Summary? Don't worry, the Nokia 808 is still king of the heap in terms of video (as well as stills).

Here's the demonstration, showing 1080p video capture on the Lumia 920 in a variety of different scenarios. There's audio commentary too, so sit back and watch:

[As ever, 'up' the quality to whatever your connection can stand and make full screen. And note that YouTube applies its own compression to the video stream, so there's a slight degradation in quality.]

From my review text:

At its heart, the camera unit in the 920 is, as we have established, a fairly standard 1/3" BackSide Illuminated sensor, with Nokia's usual branded optics up front. As you'll see from the video above, the thing that really distringuishes the Lumia 920's video capture is the innovative miniaturised optical stabilisation system - small shakes and vibrations are effectively cancelled out during capture, resulting in a much smoother (and thus easier to watch) result. The OIS works superbly, it has to be said, perhaps surprisingly so - it's amazing that Nokia has gotten such pro-grade hardware stabilisation down to size that it can fit inside a standard (slim) smartphone body.

I've taken many tens of hours of video on the 808 PureView, running Symbian, of course, so I've got a pretty good handle on the respective pros and cons. Despite the OIS advantages, for anyone with a steadyish hand in the first place, the extra quality that comes from the massive 1/1.2" sensor in the 808 and the PureView oversampling (even in video mode), plus the stereo HAAC capture, mean that the 808 is still top of the heap.

Then add in another factor, the flexibility to zoom in losslessly ('intelligent digital zoom' from the N86 and N8, but on steroids) by up to 3x even in 1080p capture mode, and the 808 truly becomes a videographer's tool rather than a video-capturing 'phone'. 

The OIS is certainly nice to have, and will improve certain shots and situations, but most 808 owners are, I think, serious enough about their stills and video to make a good stab at bracing the phone when capturing.

And, as ever, I'd like to see a phone with OIS and a largish sensor with a healthy degree of PureView 'phase 1' oversampling. It's unlikely that this would run Symbian, of course, but who knows....

Source / Credit: All About Windows Phone