TK2011
New member
L920 has 8.7MP sensor but a different subset of it is used to get 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratio shots. They use this clever approach to get the most bang out of the available pixels. You are getting 8.0MP for 4:3 and 7.1MP for 16:9. See the illustration in this whitepaper from Nokia: http://i.nokia.com/blob/view/-/1824212/data/2/-/Download-pureview-820.pdfAlthough the arithmetics seem to support your stance on the number of pixels used to capture an object, I do not buy into it. Note 2, i5 and SG3 have 8MP, while L920 has a 8.7MP, so the extra pixels should compensate for the wider lens.
Also, if your theory was true, L920 should kill my 5MP Torch in daylight, unfortunately is the other way around.
It's not a theory. Not saying there is nothing else in play here but what I said is a fact. A 5MP picture sharpened for certain display resolution can always look "sharper" than 8MP. People who upgraded from Nikon D90 to D7000 got higher resolution but complained that it's not as sharp because they were pixel peeping at 100%. It depends on many things: lens focal length, how jpeg engine processes it and what resolution you view your image, etc. The OP didn't even compare them on the same screen.