Conclusion
Scores aren't everything, though for anyone totting them up during the piece, the totals (each out of 70) are:
Nokia 808 PureView 61 pts
Nokia Lumia 920 PureView 57pts
HTC One X 34 pts
Nokia Lumia 900 28 pts
We'll obviously have a lot more on the Lumia 920's camera as part of our formal review coverage on All About Windows Phone, but I'm already able to come to a few conclusions:
In terms of all round still photography, the 1/1.2"-sensored Nokia 808 PureView, running Symbian, is still the best camera phone in the world - by a small margin. Though add in real world shots of people indoors and at events, where the Xenon flash freezes motion so much better, and the 808 draws further ahead.
Given the constraints on phone thickness, the camera in the new 1/3"-sensored Lumia 920 PureView does astonishingly well with the benefit of the OIS. With a sensor that's barely bigger than that in the Android and iOS competition, it produces shots that are often close to the 808's and occasionally better. Given that the humped Nokia 808, running a smartphone OS which is now facing an End Of Life, isn't for everybody, the sleek Lumia 920 running a 2013 operating system may well be the better option for users who love taking photos. The next-gen LED flash does need more testing and, as with all LED-equipped phones, there will still be issues in low light when shooting people. Watch this space for real world pub tests!
Even used with care, photos from the likes of the 1/3.2"-sensored HTC One X (and, by inference, the iPhone 4S/5 and SGS III) are almost always going to be inferior to those from the similarly sized Lumia 920 - the optical image stablisation did well here - it'll do even better in terms of difference in quality when used by novice users.
The previous generation of 1/3.2" camera units used by Nokia, even with Carl Zeiss optics, are worlds apart from the 920's camera. Worlds. Partly down to the previous Windows Phone 7 software, partly the average hardware, partly the lack of OIS.
A side issue, for AAS readers, is whether the two year old 1/1.8"-sensored Nokia N8 has a better camera than the Lumia 920. The physicist in me says yes, but the OIS on the latter would make it a very close match to call. One for me to test another day!
And so it's on to our review coverage of the Nokia Lumia 920, running Windows Phone 8. Rafe's up first, with an overview of the hardware and software - I'll be testing the stills camera in real life and seeing what a difference OIS makes to video footage in one of the review parts, all coming in the next few weeks.