Low light: Nokia Lumia 925 even better than Nokia Lumia 920, obliterates Samsung Galaxy S4

Nokia had a special room to compare the improved low light performance of the Nokia Lumia 925 against its competitors.

They had a Samsung Galaxy s4 for testing (not everyone carries a competitor device, e.g. I only had the 920). Now we know the Nokia Lumia 920 was unmatched for extreme low light.

Holy heck, the Nokia Lumia 925 performs even better! The room was soo dark my DSLR and the lens I had on couldn’t take pictures or videos properly inside (the lens has OIS too! and it’s super heavy!).

When we took some pictures on the SGS4, I thought I hadn’t taken the picture or I had inadvertently locked the phone.

Nope. Nokia pushed the low light capabilities even further to the point that the SGS4 could not produce an image.

Here it is against the 920. Apologies for the poor angle – the room was packed and I had to capture what I could given that I had to catch this train back to uni.

Now remember how good the pictures are from the 920 low light sans flash. Look at what the 925 can do.

Yes, there’s motion blur because that guy tried to duck out of the photo last minute, but if you tried to pose for a picture or tried to capture some scenery where not even 1000 flash guns would have helped, the technology in the 925’s low light would rescue you.

Admittedly the angle is a bit poor there. Another thing to note on the AMOLED display of the 925 is the extreme viewing angles, especially in comparison to the 920.

DO NOT compare the image quality between the 925 and 920 based on a picture of a phone screen. I hadn’t adjusted the settings on my camera to even see the screen let alone the fact I should have attempted to bluetooth pictures over.

My camera wasn’t focusing at all here…:(

I did end up doing the rest of my recordings on the 920 as my DSLR was failing me on that regard.

Note the photos are much clearer. The 925 isn’t overexposed, it’s just that the camera wasn’t able to handle it.
With flash, the results are also improved for the 925. Again, apologies I couldn’t get my camera to handle the lighting properly on this.

So no additional lighting from the flash gun, just the lighting from the displays. You can see just how much more the 925 captures with flash. Again, the 925 is not washed out, it’s just the effect from incorrect camera settings on my end with my DSLR not being able to get the capture correctly.

Imagine this kind of technology WITH the xenon lens. It’s at least one way of improving low light without making the phone thicker than you’d expect due to having xenon. I’m not one to fuss too much on thickness though so bring on xenon + this for me 😀

Against competitor devices like the SGS4? Both with flash, the 925 of course still wins. You can’t tell because I did a sucky job and doing this comparison (never again doing this rushed! I shall ask to take the whole day free or get someone else to do it next time. Though on the plus side for me, it was a privilege meeting all these Nokia/Tech peeps in person. I reckon I should have just stayed in London, especially in hindsight now the train in front appears to have hit ‘something’ and we’re stuck on the line and I’m going to be even more late, possibly missing that thing in Uni).

In the picture below, the trees don’t even exist in the SGSIV photos. Having flash certainly helped it but not in the same way the 925 did. 

Hopefully someone else has managed to do a better comparison that what I’ve managed. We’ll find and link to them. Sincerest apologies from me, I should have produced something better or at least tried to redo them, alas, timing issues (I hope it was more me not getting the settings quite right rather than my lens still being broken after coming back from repair on Friday). It was indeed very exciting though – how to get material for posting in 30 minutes and not miss the only train to get you back in time for uni. Haha.

Thanks Nokia for the invite to the end. We have some hands on demoes and other pictures to share later on today or perhaps tomorrow.

Category: Nokia