The Sony Xperia Z3v is has come to Verizon this week and the Sony Xperia Z3 is coming to T-Mobile on October 29, so as always, we compare the camera to all of its competing cameras.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 is the gold standard of smart phone cameras. It has a 41 MP Pureview camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, a real xenon flash, and support for taking RAW photos. While the Nokia Lumia 1020 was released almost a year and a half ago in July, 2013, it is one of few smart phones released that long ago that remain relevant.
Last week, the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 was released on all of the major carriers. Although the device itself isn’t the best device around, the camera is fantastic, as is with all Samsung devices. When you get a device with a great camera, the next logical step is to compare it to the Nokia Lumia 1020.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 is widely renowned as the best smart phone camera. It has a 41 MP camera, RAW support and a real xenon flash. It is a Pureview camera with a Carl Zeiss lens. It’s just great.
So far I have compared the camera of the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 to the Sony Xperia Z3, iPhone 6 Plus, and the OnePlus One. The scope of this comparison will be the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and the Nokia Lumia 1020.
Since the Nokia Lumia 1320 has recently gotten the Lumia Cyan update, Nokia was kind enough to send me a review unit. I’m doing with it what I do with all review units: camera reviews! Since the Nokia Lumia 1320 is a mid-range phone, it makes sense to compare it to mid-range phones. The scope of this review will be to compare the Nokia Lumia 1320 to the Moto G.
I’m a big fan of the Nokia Lumia 1320. It is one of very few budget phablets that exist. While some might say that Nokia makes too many different phones, they can be commended for making all sizes available to all price points.
The Nokia Lumia 635 and the Nokia Lumia 1320 have quite a bit in common. They are both budget phones, they both have low resolution LCD displays, they both use Snapdragon 400 processors, and they both have 5 MP rear cameras.
The Nokia Lumia 1320 does have a few bells and whistles that the Lumia 635 does not. It has a flash on the rear camera and it has a front camera. Oh yea, did I mention that it’s 6″ in size?
Just last week, the Nokia Lumia 1320 received the Lumia Cyan update. I know, it seems like forever ago that Microsoft finished Windows Phone 8.1 and we’ve been waiting for it on our phones ever since. After all, the Nokia Lumia 1520 got it back in June. Remember, no one on Verizon or T-Mobile have Lumia Cyan yet and no one on Sprint has Lumia anything. Prior to the 1320, no one except AT&T has received the Lumia Cyan update in the United States.
Nokia makes great cameras. They always have. Even the low end 5 MP camera on the Nokia Lumia 635 is great, so I expect the Nokia Lumia 1320 to live up to that. Like the Lumia 635, the Lumia 1320 has a low resolution LCD display, meaning that you really can’t tell the quality of the photos from viewing them on a phone.
Last Sunday, the Nokia Lumia 530 was released in the United States. While it is supposed to be the successor to the Nokia Lumia 520, the specs are inferior to the Nokia Lumia 520. In fact, the camera can’t even focus. I ended up finding that the Nokia Lumia 635 would be a much better idea for comparisons, even though it has been available since June.
I’ve been spending a lot of time with these phones and when the Nokia Lumia 530 was released last Sunday in the United States, I got one to review it and the camera was a huge disappointment. It doesn’t focus. I got the Nokia Lumia 635 to compare it to and I am super psyched about it.
Ever since Nokia sent me a Nokia Lumia 635 to review, I’ve been itching to compare it to the Nokia Lumia 1020. After all, 90% of the time, when you are looking at a photo from a Nokia Lumia 1020, it’s a 5 MP photo. This will be a comparison to see if the 5 MP photo from the Nokia Lumia 635 can stand up to the Nokia Lumia 1020.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 has three settings: 5 MP JPEG, 5 MP JPEG and 35 MP JPEG, and 5 MP JPEG and 35 MP DNG. The 35 MP photo will be 38 MP if the user changes the aspect ratio to 4:3. On the first or the third setting, the user is only seeing a 5 MP photo unless he opens the DNG photo in Photoshop or another photo editing app. If the user shares a photo, it uses the low resolution photo. The only time it uses the high resolution photo is when the user zooms in on the image.
We spend a lot of time talking about our iPhones, Moto Xs, OnePlus Ones, HTC One M8s, Nokia Lumia 930s, and our LG G3s with their 2.5 GHz Snapdragon 801 processors and 2 or 3 GB RAM. These phones have up to 20 MP rear cameras and up to 5 MP front cameras. Some of them take 4K video. Some of them support RAW photos. The LG G3 has a laser focused camera. The Moto X is always listening.
If you grew up in the 90s like I did, you will have a hard time reciting the specs of the OnePlus One without following it up with “arg arg arg more power” like Tim Allen used to do in Home Improvement.
We spend so much time with these super-powered phones that when a mid-range phone like the Moto G or the Nokia Lumia 635 comes our way, we just sort of say that they are great phones, but we pass them up because they certainly wouldn’t be able to meet our needs.
The best selling phone in the history of Windows Phone is the Nokia Lumia 520. The Nokia Lumia 530 is meant to be a successor to the Lumia 520. While it was released internationally in August, it wasn’t released in the United States until last week.
The Nokia Lumia 530 is a phone that is clearly designed to scrape the bottom of the barrel. This is not a negative thing. After all, if all you need is a phone that makes calls, sends messages, and you can check Facebook, Twitter, and your bank account from, the Nokia Lumia 530 might be for you.
For the Love of Tech 