Earlier than I used to be an Android person, I was actually into Home windows Cellphone. Again then, Nokia was already performing some fairly nice issues with smartphone cameras, from the Symbian-powered Nokia N8 (which I owned) and 808 Pureview to the Nokia Lumia 1020 working Home windows Cellphone. Again in 2012, a 41MP digital camera was fairly wild, and Nokia was utilizing the sensor in a manner not generally seen on a smartphone, making it a reasonably large deal.
Whereas I’ve had a number of Lumia telephones (I nonetheless have my Lumia 950), I by no means owned the 1020. So when my good friend lately gave me his, I made a decision it was the proper alternative to take it for a spin to see simply how nicely the digital camera has held up over time. And since it has been 12 years because it launched, I made a decision to check the Lumia to my present favourite machine in Android imaging, the OnePlus 12.
Evaluating the Lumia 1020 and OnePlus 12
The Lumia 1020 solely options one rear digital camera, with a complete decision of 41MP and a complete usable decision of 38MP. By comparability, the OnePlus 12 digital camera setup consists of three rear sensors, together with a 50MP major sensor, a 64MP telephoto digital camera with 3x optical zoom, and a 48MP ultrawide digital camera.
Whereas the Lumia 1020 is restricted by its single digital camera lens, it has a singular manner of capturing photos for the time, letting customers concurrently seize a 5MP picture and a full-resolution 38MP picture. Utilizing pixel binning, the telephone is ready to obtain “lossless” zoom whereas retaining the 5MP decision whereas nonetheless taking a second full-resolution picture even when zoomed in.
The thought with the Lumia 1020 is that you would be able to zoom in whereas taking the photograph, or you possibly can take the full-resolution picture and “reframe” it later to get basically the identical high quality. Nonetheless, apart from solely having one sensor, subsequently missing any optical zoom and the power to take ultrawide pictures, the Lumia 1020 is restricted to roughly 3x zoom, which remains to be “lossless,” which means you may get a 5MP picture regardless.
In the meantime, the telephoto lens on the OnePlus 12 not solely gives optical zoom at 3x however also can present as much as 6x of in-sensor zoom whereas sustaining picture high quality.
That mentioned, I made a decision to maintain zoom ranges at 3x to see how the Lumia 1020 fared towards the devoted telephoto lens of the OnePlus 12. I additionally captured each the zoomed 5MP picture and full-resolution 38MP picture collectively.
The outcomes
One factor price noting is that in the first place look, there’s not a lot distinction between the Lumia 1020’s 5MP picture and 38MP picture when taking unzoomed photos and even when cropping in later on the similar relative zoom distance on the full-resolution shot. The distinction in high quality would solely present up if you happen to zoomed into the 5MP picture and 38MP picture after the very fact, with the latter retaining extra high quality at 100% zoom.
When evaluating with the OnePlus 12, what’s constant throughout every of the photographs is that OnePlus handles varied lighting situations significantly better than the Lumia 1020. That goes for publicity, shade saturation, and even noise, all of which hinder the Lumia’s photos in a technique or one other. That is type of to be anticipated given how outdated this telephone is, though the Lumia nonetheless manages to supply respectable photographs if there’s good lighting.
Simply do not attempt to take photographs at evening, because the Lumia digital camera will endure, even with pixel binning and the built-in optical picture stabilization.
Whereas taking photographs, I struggled so much with the response time of the Lumia 1020. Opening the digital camera app takes about 3-4 seconds, even when utilizing the devoted digital camera button. Not solely that, however truly capturing a photograph can take a few seconds because the digital camera finds its focus. Nonetheless, I’ll generally discover myself stunned with simply how nicely the shutter velocity is ready to seize shifting objects, regardless of how a lot work the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 is doing to take and course of the picture.
You possibly can see beneath how the telephone was in a position to properly seize the birds flying round, with the wings stored pretty in focus. The scene itself was a bit chaotic, however each telephones weren’t too phased by all of the motion. Even a few of at the moment’s greatest Android telephones would wrestle with all of the flapping wings (taking a look at you, Samsung).
How far we have come
What I spotted whereas testing the Lumia 1020 was that whereas it was performing some spectacular issues in 2012, digital camera know-how has come a great distance in smartphones. Not solely are telephones now outfitted with a number of lenses to realize issues like wider photographs or higher zoom, however the greatest Android digital camera telephones (and even not-so-good ones) typically make use of a number of the similar strategies that the Lumia was utilizing even again then, solely higher.
Telephones just like the Vivo X200 Professional have taken smartphone pictures to some spectacular heights, giving us near-DSLR high quality and permitting anybody to take spectacular photographs with a faucet of a button. Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Extremely, with its large 200MP digital camera and quad-camera setup, does an amazing job of giving customers a really versatile and accessible digital camera system to rival its closest opponents just like the iPhone.
The Lumia 1020 was fairly a marvel for its time, and I might have liked to personal one again when it first launched. However having one now makes me actually respect simply how far we have include smartphone pictures.
