Nokia Lumia 920 PureView phase 2 trumps Nokia 808 PureView in low light without flash. 920 available ‘later this year’.
I’m not sure about you but one thing we haven’t seen is how the Nokia Lumia 920 with PureView phase 2 does against the phenomenal Nokia 808 PureView (phase 1). Against competitor smartphones, I knew that the 920 would blow them away but I thought it would concede to the 808.
Colour me surprised when I see that the image stabiliser does wonders in absolute low light sans flash. There are situations where even my favourite xenon just isn’t enough (close up/people shots within 2m are great though).
In this video you can see the 920 performing wonderfully.This doesn’t mean the 808 is bad, it just means there’s certain conditions where the 920 would be a more appropriate device.
Note, there is no flash. The initial white light coming from the 920 is the focus assist only.
The OIS floating lens PureView 2 in video is stunning. I keep thinking the demo guy stops shaking his hand because the picture becomes really smooth, but he’s still actually shaking!
Lumia 920 is said to be ‘available LATER this year’ 
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by Steve Chippy Paine <<( I didn’t realise I was already subscribed to Chippy’s alternative channel until I saw it in my feed :p)
I think I will still enjoy the 808 more for night outs when it’s super dark, people may be moving and I’d need the power of xenon and fast shutter speed to freeze the moment. PureView 2 isn’t so much about freezing, but getting light in the camera where flash wouldn’t really help. It would be very interesting to see how much the improved LED light helps given that the camera is super sensitive in low light.
PureView 2 may be better for scenic shots, shots where subjects are quite far away and it’s dark (so flash won’t help) and for smoother video.
As a fuller smartphone experience for me, I’d go for the 920 (I still carry both 900 for smartphone stuff, 808 for camera) but that’s because that’s what I’m used to. There will also be others for whom, 808 is the perfect camera smartphone.
Category: Lumia, Nokia, Symbian, Windows Phone
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If the reports from AT&T are correct, we will find what the camera can do very soon. 21-st next month .. probably pre-order, less likely to start selling, but either way, its coming soon.
I hope to jesus that this thing will also work with T-Mobile.
The 808 is still superior in low light (according to Nokia), however it needs a tripod to achieve this. It can go to ISO1600, and 2.7 second exposure. It will gather more light. What it can’t do is a handheld long exposure. You will end up with a fuzzy picture unless you have ultra steady hands. OIS means you can extend the shutter beyond the 808′s handheld range and hence get more light. In the shots above, I can bet the 808 wasn’t in creative mode with all the gizmos tuned up.
I still think its a great idea, don’t get me wrong. Not many people carry a tripod with them
Now an 808 with OIS would be incredible!
Lumia 920 has a f/2.0 aperture and 808 has got a f/2.4 aperture. Lumia 920 has a BSI sensor, 808 hasn’t.
There’s no way 808 can perform better than 920 in low light.
808 is the best cameraphone but 920 is unbeatable in low light with OIS, BSI sensor and f/2.0 aperture.
Not according to Damian Dinning at Nokia
The oversampling in the 808 allows higher ISO and exposure times which makes up for the aperture and BSI sensor. The caveat is that you need a tripod.
I agree, that in handheld mode (unless you have far steadier hands than me), the OIS will enable the 920 to outperform the 808. When on a tripod with pointy hat settings, the 808 still captures more light.
OK! But a cameraphone is meant to be portable, something that you can easily carry in your pocket. What’s the use of a cameraphone if you have to use a tripod with it? A DSL-R would be a better choice :/
Agreed. That is where the 920 shines. It gets good shots without a tripod.
i think mynokiablog should post how to master steady hand when using nokia 808.
And recommend some of the gorillapod or mini and portable tripod for nokia 808.
Remember, 808 is still king of cameraphone because it can achieve better low light result than 920 with the tripod, not to say its zoom, zoom zoom and oversampling
the camera ui(and belle fp2 ui) on 808 is much more easier and prettier than 920.
You mean like this?
http://mynokiablog.com/2012/09/11/video-hardware-stabilisation-samples-on-nokia-808-pureview-with-stabiliser-accessory-vs-softwareno-stabilisation-simulation-of-pureview-12-mix/
And my Ixus 105 can take better shots than 808 in low light with a tripod with 15 sec shutter .
What’s the use of a cameraphone if you have to carry a tripod with it? :/
As I know PV808 has got 41Mpix camera while Lumia has only part of this number. I’ve heard rumours that Windows is not capable to handle data from 41Mpix camera, so it had to be cut down. Whatever the reason is math is still math and physics is still physics – worse camera can’t be better. I understand marketing needs, but for me this is seems to be not fair to say so. This is what I think. This is like with fake commercial where a video made big professional camera from van were pretending hiper-extra stabilisation of picture by Lumia. Just not fair – cheap dirty tricks.
Yes because longer shutter time versus shorter shutter time is not physics. *eyeroll*.
I’d suggest you go away before you say anything else that you’ll embarass yourself with. Oh, and maybe pick up a basic maths/physics book and the Nokia PureView papers (1 and 2) and get a proper understanding of what’s involved in the 2 methods before you roll out more uninformed ‘opinions’.
Might I remind you of Nokia’s tagline for PureView all along? “It’s not the number of pixles, but how you use them”
Why is it that a lot of PureView ‘purists’ seem to forget that and are completely still focused on the number of pixels? I love my 808 PureView, but I know I’ll love the camera tech in the Lumia 920 as well. Kevin Shields is on record as saying the imaging engineers are working on combining PureView 1 and 2 – the final result of which I’m sure will be stunning and put our 808s and 920s to shame.
MWC 2013… Hope the things don’t become a Behemot (in size) phone, because one of the complains that you hear more from people that use DSLR is the size of the camera, even without the lens the camera body used to be giant an heavy…
Hi
Are you sure that Nokia is combining the two technologies because it is a tough job. 920 uses Microsoft tech whereas 808 uses Symbian.
If I can get a pureview 808 with optical stabilization, I would be on cloud 9!!
post is FAKE ! FAKE ! FAKE !
Did you notice that the video that he is playing in the end is not the same one that was recorded when he was shaking his hand. He took two videos and played by mistake the second one where no shaking was made.
Still after seeing another videos with OIS on the result would have been pretty much the same 
Yup. It was strange of him to do that since the previous recording demo shows the OIS instantly reducing his shakes.
I guess they’ve been instructed to show only what’s close to final
I cannot make a comparison right now, but I don’t need a tripod to take very good…exceptional photos in low light with 808.
And now, that my wife has 808, and I have iPhone 4S, our combined “smart phone experience” and features are the fullest in the world.
No, fullest in the world will be 920!
FM transmitter?
Ha ha…. A Toyota Ayog is faster than a Ferrari, (if the driver in the Ferrari is not allowed to use the speeder.)
No not really, more like one car is good at going around corners but may not be that quick driving fast in straight line.
But if you use the flash on the 808 it will take better low light pictures than the 920 right?
It depends on the scene. If it’s people, within about 1.5-possibly 3 metres, I think so.
If you want to see the background, (e.g. mountain behind them, or a beach or a city etc) that is also dark, no amount of flash is going to light all that up unless some how your xenon flash turns into an atom bomb.
I didn’t read every single of the 140 posts about this, so excuse me if i have said the same thing as someone else ..
The 920′s camera settings in auto mode are likely to be optimized for use in low light, the 808′s auto settings are not! You would have to play about with the ISO and brightness settings and then do the test again. Ok, it might be a tad blurry in places so a tripod would be needed but the test would be fair as it’s a ‘Low light’ shoot out. The test shown here is completely unfair and doesn’t represent the 808′s ability to take low light shots.
Woah, I had the same idea as you, but did not see your comment until I posted. I guess this is the strong point of the 920 compared with the other phones: not requiring users to play around with the settings to get a good image. Though if what we assumed is indeed the case, then the test is skewed towards 920.
It is good that you can just produce those shots without the need to change any settings, but that shows you how different the camera’s are on the devices. The 808 is an ‘All rounder’ so you would need to change the settings to obtain good low light shots, and i’d go as far to say, i bet it produces better low light images than the 920 (Using a tripod of course)
I bought a tripod mount some time ago, but the day i got it, one of the legs broke on the tripod lol
I’ve got a new one now, so hopefully i can get some shots this weekend, preferably low light ones.
You don’t even need to play around, just set the scene to “Night mode” and you’ll get very close (though MUCH better) results than the 920.
I’m not quite sure about that. I have a 808 and night mode is not all that. Well, not in extreme low light.
I’ve also got an 808, and would disagree. I have never been able to take photos of stars with any other smartphone. I can on the 808, thanks mainly to high iso, and long (for a phone) exposures. You don’t get far more extreme low light than that
I will say that it took me about an hour to work out the best settings, but on the other hand, at least I *could* change the settings…..
I could be mistaken, but what I infer from this is that 920 has better software algorithms than the other phones to detect when to use its night mode in the camera’s auto mode. This with the aid of the OIS and ability to absorb 5x more light helps to produce better images.
It kind of pisses me off that they don’t enable Night mode on the 808 when comparing the phones. Trust me, Night mode on the 808 would get a lot BETTER photos all round than the 920, including and, in fact, specially in low light gathering and low noise.
The only thing the Lumia 920′s camera is better than the 808′s is in optical image stabilization.
interesting.
that test is so ffffaaaaaaaakkkkkkkkkkkkeeeeeee why didnt he put the 808 in night mode thn he would of got a great picture
follow me on twitter @sirreflex
Hi Jay.
Thanks for posting this.
It’s causing a lot of discussion which is usually a good sign.
General comment to all reading:
I’ve got the 808 here (and had the N8 and N82 before that as my main phones) and am so impressed with the quality of the 808. With a little knowledge and tweaking you can get great photos out of it.
Last night, great example…
https://plus.google.com/u/0/106056812477855110591/posts/7EHcWodVo79
The Lumia 920 is a better consumer choice though and in general, from what i’ve seen and researched, it’s going to produce better pictures, more of the time, for more people.
Personally i’d rather have OIS than 41MP and I think most consumers would too.
I might go back to Photokina tomorrow and force Nokia to play back the shaking part of the video though. They did the same with me as they did with Engadget – only playing back the steady recording. I’ve seen the playback of the unsteady recording and it’s damn impressive although there are artifacts. The edges of the images don’t get as much stabilisation as in the middle and if you watch the preview windows on recording, you can see that happening on the sides of the image.
Despite that, we’re talking about a huge leap here. OIS is VERY important for smartphone cameras as, very simply, it allows more photons to reach the sensor and that, in my opinion, is better than oversampling and post-processing.
Sorry if i’m preaching to the choir!
Thanks for the insight chippy, good luck if you manage to convince Nokia to playback that shaky bit!
Chippy, can you also talk to them about putting out some daylight picture samples?
And would love to hear your impressions on the 920 overall if you get to handle it at all.
I would want to see how a lumia 920 performs with the newly developed Dual LED flash it has. I’m just a bit curious, hope you could do such thing.