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 digicam was fairly wild, and Nokia was utilizing the sensor in a method not generally seen on a smartphone, making it a fairly 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 just lately gave me his, I made a decision it was the proper alternative to take it for a spin to see simply how properly the digicam has held up over time. And since it has been 12 years because it launched, I made a decision to match the Lumia to my present favourite system in Android imaging, the OnePlus 12.
Evaluating the Lumia 1020 and OnePlus 12
The Lumia 1020 solely options one rear digicam, with a complete decision of 41MP and a complete usable decision of 38MP. By comparability, the OnePlus 12 digicam setup consists of three rear sensors, together with a 50MP major sensor, a 64MP telephoto digicam with 3x optical zoom, and a 48MP ultrawide digicam.
Whereas the Lumia 1020 is restricted by its single digicam lens, it has a singular method of capturing photographs 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 which you could zoom in whereas taking the picture, or you may take the full-resolution picture and “reframe” it later to get primarily the identical high quality. Nevertheless, other than solely having one sensor, subsequently missing any optical zoom and the flexibility to take ultrawide photographs, the Lumia 1020 is restricted to roughly 3x zoom, which remains to be “lossless,” that means you will get a 5MP picture regardless.
In the meantime, the telephoto lens on the OnePlus 12 not solely gives optical zoom at 3x however may present as much as 6x of in-sensor zoom whereas sustaining picture high quality.
That stated, I made a decision to maintain zoom ranges at 3x to see how the Lumia 1020 fared in opposition to 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 at the beginning look, there’s not a lot distinction between the Lumia 1020’s 5MP picture and 38MP picture when taking unzoomed photographs 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 in case you 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 pictures is that OnePlus handles numerous lighting circumstances a lot better than the Lumia 1020. That goes for publicity, colour saturation, and even noise, all of which hinder the Lumia’s photographs in a method or one other. That is kind of to be anticipated given how outdated this telephone is, though the Lumia nonetheless manages to provide respectable pictures if there’s good lighting.
Simply do not attempt to take pictures at evening, because the Lumia digicam will undergo, even with pixel binning and the built-in optical picture stabilization.
Whereas taking pictures, I struggled rather a lot with the response time of the Lumia 1020. Opening the digicam app takes about 3-4 seconds, even when utilizing the devoted digicam button. Not solely that, however really capturing a photograph can take a few seconds because the digicam finds its focus. Nonetheless, I’ll typically discover myself stunned with simply how properly the shutter pace is ready to seize transferring objects, regardless of how a lot work the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 is doing to take and course of the picture.
You possibly can see under how the telephone was capable of properly seize the birds flying round, with the wings saved 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 as we speak’s finest Android telephones would battle with all of the flapping wings ( 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, digicam know-how has come a great distance in smartphones. Not solely are telephones now geared up with a number of lenses to attain issues like wider pictures or higher zoom, however the finest Android digicam telephones (and even not-so-good ones) typically make use of a few of the similar strategies that the Lumia was utilizing even again then, solely higher.
Telephones just like the Vivo X200 Professional have taken smartphone images to some spectacular heights, giving us near-DSLR high quality and permitting anybody to take spectacular pictures with a faucet of a button. Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Extremely, with its huge 200MP digicam and quad-camera setup, does an awesome job of giving customers a really versatile and accessible digicam 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 admire simply how far we have include smartphone images.
