Nokia 808 owners, of course, will take comfort from the known pros and cons of the two devices - in terms of experience, the shot to shot time is much faster on the 808, plus there's a lot more to fiddle with in Creative mode. Yet in fairness the 1020's four second shot to shot time is largely due to the way all shots are gathered at full resolution behind the scenes, offering up 'zoom later' possibilities that genuinely do take the PureView concept in a new (and slightly futuristic) direction.
It's almost impossible to say which device is 'better' since their strengths and weaknesses come in almost equal measure. At the end of the day, it probably comes down to ecosystem/compatibility with services. Plus it's very hard to still buy an 808, mind you, the Lumia 1020 hasn't even started its sales push in most of the world. Me? I want to own both!
From the verdict in the review:
Despite the promise of 'zoom reinvented' and the generally very good results, there's clearly still some work to do for Nokia in terms of the Lumia 1020's performance and camera functions. Most of the issues above can be directly addressed though, and perhaps the enforced exclusivity through AT&T in the USA for the first six weeks or so will work out to the 'benefit' of worldwide users, who may get a more optimised, issue-free device from day one?
Even with the issues listed though, I was very impressed by the Lumia 1020 - it's a tantalisingly slick piece of engineering. There's no denying that the 1020 does take the PureView vision behind the Nokia 808 and extend it - a few options and subtleties have been lost in the transition from Symbian to Windows Phone, but the end result is most of the power of the original system on a much more future proof hardware platform, and with some rather clever lateral thinking thrown in as well.
For a smartphone world steeped in 'iPhoneography' and relatively staid shots, the Lumia 1020 will come as something of a major leap forwards. And at long last, Windows Phone 8 has a genuine flagship device with utterly unique technology that is to be found on no other active smartphone platform.
In the next review part I'm going to look in detail at video capture, referencing the lossless zoom, OIS and other functions in a whole new light.
The video capture element is something I haven't yet compared directly with the Nokia 808, but I have the rig to do this and it seems the next natural thing to try. Will the addition of OIS compensate for the slightly smaller sensor and the lack of a dedicated image processor?