We take a look at two of the most photogenic camera phones on the market, Nokia’s newly announced Lumia 920 and Apple’s iPhone 4S
Nokia’s smartphones have a good track record when it comes to their photographic prowess, from the excellent N8, to the 808 PureView – the company’s devices continually punch above their weight and the newest addition to its stable, the Lumia 920, is set to continue that trend.
To get a view of how much it offers, and the overall quality and value it’s able to bring to the end user, we’re comparing it to Apple’s iPhone 4S, a device which is responsible for making photography fun again.
Will the Lumia 920 end the iPhone’s reign or will Apple’s device come out on top?
Power
Apple’s iPhone 4S is powered by a dual-core 1GHz Cortex-A9 CPU and also features a PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU, making it a great smartphone for gaming and enjoying media.
The iPhone 4S also packs 512MB RAM and 16, 32 or 64GB of internal storage, with no support for removable media such as micro SD cards.
Nokia’s Lumia 920 is driven by one of Qualcomm’s MSM8960 chipsets which consists of a dual-core 1.5GHz ‘Krait’ CPU and an Adreno 225 GPU.
The device also sports 1GB RAM and 32GB of storage but, like the iPhone, lacks support for removable media.
Winner – Nokia Lumia 920
Display
The Nokia Lumia 920 is fronted by a 4.5-inch IPS TFT touchscreen which operates at a resolution of 768 x 1280 and has a pixel density of 332PPI.
The screen is super responsive, allowing users to operate it with a gloved hand, and colours appear vivid, as do blacks and greys.
Apple’s iPhone 4S features the company’s famous Retina Display technology giving the 3.5-inch screen with a pixel density of 330PPI, operating at a resolution of 640 x 960.
The iPhone’s screen is pin-sharp, much like the Nokia’s, and colors are similarly well reproduced, but the overall edge goes to Nokia’s entry in this criterion simply for the tremendous responsiveness of the Lumia 920’s display.
Winner – Nokia Lumia 920
Form
Nokia Lumia 920 - 130.3 x 70.8 x 10.7mm, 185g
Apple iPhone 4S - 115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3mm, 140g
The Lumia 920 is a fine looking device carved from a piece of polycarbonate. It’s reasonably slim without being wafer thin and flimsy, and it shares many design cues with previous models of Lumia too, with the same touch sensitive keys and bezel making an appearance on the face of the phone.
Naturally, being a Nokia, you can be fairly sure that the device is robust too, as it will have passed the Finns discriminating drop test and other weird and wonderful punishments in order to ensure it doesn’t mess with the company’s reputation (or the internet meme).
Apple’s iPhone 4S is a good looking smartphone, faced front and back with glass, which looks like a work of art in a certain light. Unfortunately it doesn’t retain those stunning good looks if you drop it on concrete (or anything else harder than it is).
Fragility aside the device is nicely balanced, slim and a very comfortable weight and remains one of the more distinctive smartphones on the market.
Winner – Draw
Software
The iPhone 4S runs iOS, Apple’s mobile platform, which is still as usable and dependable as it was back in 2007 when it launched. Unfortunately it still looks the same too, which is a bit of a downer as other mobile operating systems have grown a lot, leaving it looking pretty plain – and without widgets or customizations there isn't really a lot you can do within the terms of the device’s warranty.
The Apple App Store is a great plus point for iOS though, as it’s stocked to the gills with great apps for virtually any task or demand you can think of.
The Nokia Lumia 920 runs on the next iteration of Microsoft’s new mobile OS, Windows Phone 8, and the software has received some great upgrades and tweaks making it, well, what it should have been 2 years ago.
WP8 boasts a newly upgraded browser, some fantastic security enhancements (making it a great choice for business users), Wallet – which enables you to capitalize on the device’s NFC functionality and Nokia Maps – which gives users offline mapping among other features.
The device is also able to take advantage of Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace for app downloads, and there are plenty in there already.
Apps designed for Windows Phone 7 work on Windows Phone 8 too, but apps aimed at the newer platform won’t work with older devices which run WP7 – which is something of a disappointment.
Winner – Draw
Camera
Apple’s iPhone sports a very impressive 8-megapixel camera with an LED flash, autofocus, geo-tagging, face detection, HDR, touch focus and 1080P video capture with stabilization.
The device also features a VGA front-facing camera for FaceTime usage.
Performance-wise the iPhone 4S’ camera is good. It takes high quality still images in ideal light conditions and captured video is good too. Put the device into the hands of a professional and you’ll really see what it can do though – it’ll produce striking, print worthy stills with rich colors and contrasts.
The Nokia Lumia 920 features an 8-megapixel primary camera too, with Carl Zeiss optics, LED flash, optical image stabilization, autofocus, 1080P video capture and geo-tagging.
The device’s secondary camera is 1.3-megapixel.
At a basic-level it takes great snaps too, with very impressive low-light capture and nice color reproduction but the Lumia’s camera really comes to life when married up with Nokia’s software enhancements though, and features like Cinemagraph, which allows users to shoot a .gif-like image, and Smartshoot, which enables you to remove or add objects from photos really add to the overall experience of using the camera.
Winner – Nokia Lumia 920
And the winner is…
Nokia Lumia 920
Nokia’s newest Lumia has bested the iPhone 4S in our statistical face-off today. The device is neat looking, capable, very powerful and runs on a new and improved version of Microsoft’s OS which looks as complete as anything Google or Apple have produced.
Apple’s iPhone 4S is still a good device but its age is showing through. The real test will come next week when the iPhone 5 gets its debut – but for now let’s allow the Nokia to enjoy its victory.
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