TechnoBuffalo Lumia 920 Review

[Iviansour]

Here you go....

Nokia Lumia 920 Review - The Best Windows Phone 8 Device Yet? | TechnoBuffalo

Editor's Choice 9.5/10 !!

 

[BotanicalStig]

Great review. I'll have a hard time choosing between cyan and red.

Is it just me or will none of the gallery images open?

 

[keizka]

Maranello Red At least that was my choice.

 

[vlad0]

I thought you guys would like this:

from a kind new owner here: Nokia Lumia 920 PureView Thread - page 19

 

[Isolated1]

Very nice! I believe this is the highest review score given out to the Lumia 920 out of all reviews?

Man, the excitement is driving me insane. My upgrade rights doesn't arrive until Christmas! Also, no grey color! Dang it!!!

 

[vlad0]

TechnoBuf were very happy with the 900 as well..

 

[hasasimo]

Oh that's cool... Didn't see black in the list of tile colors coming to WP8.

 

[vlad0]

^ high contrast theme

 

[chrgeorgeson]

Some of those shots look awful from the Nokia 920 camera.
I love the promise of this phone I just don't think Nokia is really on there A game when it comes to an all around great camera phone though.
Before you all yell at me keep in mind that I preordered one and I hope to be proven wrong but even the photos that the guy in this form posted (the Canadian guy, sorry his name I forgot) are just not that great.
I'm holding out hope that the phone does a lot better with this update that Nokia will release.
However I'm not afraid to take my phone back within a few weeks and get a refund if need be.

 

[nzrocketman]

I thought you guys would like this:

Click to view quoted image


from a kind new owner here: Nokia Lumia 920 PureView Thread - page 19

I got the white and looking at doing the high contrast theme

 

[vlad0]

^You should.. it looks great! I don't want to get another white phone.. so its looking like red or cyan for me

I just don't think Nokia is really on there A game when it comes to an all around great camera phone though.

Yes, they are...they make the best camera phone ever produced, so just give them some time with Windows NT, its obviously new territory.

 

[Calot]

I find the pictures taken by that individual to be by far the crappiest I have ever seen.

Did he use macro mode?

 

[MaulerX]

I thought you guys would like this:

Click to view quoted image


from a kind new owner here: Nokia Lumia 920 PureView Thread - page 19

That's pure sexyness right there.

 

[chrgeorgeson]

^You should.. it looks great! I don't want to get another white phone.. so its looking like red or cyan for me


Yes, they are...they make the best camera phone ever produced, so just give them some time with Windows NT, its obviously new territory.

I understand what you are saying and I'm planning on giving them a bit of time. I currently have a Lumia 900 and that phone's camera is far from average in my opinion.
Maybe I should rephrase what I said.
Nokia doesn't appear to be on there A game when it comes to Windows Phone camera.

That is a lot more accurate from the pictures I've seen on my phone, and the pictures on the forum here.

I'm really hoping that I'm wrong and can't wait to be proven that way.

 

[tumaykilinc]

Some of those shots look awful from the Nokia 920 camera.
I love the promise of this phone I just don't think Nokia is really on there A game when it comes to an all around great camera phone though.
Before you all yell at me keep in mind that I preordered one and I hope to be proven wrong but even the photos that the guy in this form posted (the Canadian guy, sorry his name I forgot) are just not that great.
I'm holding out hope that the phone does a lot better with this update that Nokia will release.
However I'm not afraid to take my phone back within a few weeks and get a refund if need be.

We are on the same boat, those shots look really awful. I also pre-ordered Lumia 920, but i don't want blurry day-light photos. I hope Nokia brings an update as soon as possible.

 

[theeboredone]

I thought you guys would like this:

Click to view quoted image


from a kind new owner here: Nokia Lumia 920 PureView Thread - page 19

Times like these I am convinced to buy a white over cyan.

 

[vlad0]

.
Nokia doesn't appear to be on there A game when it comes to Windows Phone camera.

..right, this whole thing seems to be rather complicated, and we won't be able to figure it out without any "inside" information I guess.

So far, the 920 is the first "camera centric" phone in the Lumia (windows phone) line. They have been making Windows phone for .. a year now ? But within that one year they started with on core (win CE) and now they have a completely new one (win NT), so my guess is that the camera drivers and so on changed as well.

Overall, not much time at all.. I am not looking for excuses, but imaging seems to be a tricky game when it comes to software.

If we compare that to their past work,.. well, they have something like 10 years of imaging experience with their old Symbian platform, and its pretty obvious that they can't just port it over to Windows Phone easily.

Let's not forget that not all their Symbian phones are amazing at taking pictures and video, only the photo centric ones are: N86,N8, 808 .. a lot of their other phones are average.

So, lets look at this.. there are certain hardware requirements for a good imaging device, you can't just put a small sensor in a thin smartphone, and get amazing quality. That just isn't possible with the current generation imaging hardware (sensors,optics.. etc.) that we have.

N86: variable aperture, larger sensor for its time.
N8: The biggest sensor put in a mobile phone in 2010, and to this day it offers the biggest physical pixels at 1.75 microns/pixel.
808: The biggest sensor put in a smartphone ever, and an amazing set of technologies that take full advantage of the hardware. There is a ring of something like 50-60 new patents that surround PureView phase 1.

And now we have the 920: The first ever to include an optical image stabilization system in a smartphone. But, it has a smaller sensor than it's two most recent predecessors, the N8 and the 808, and it also uses a completely different operating system.

We have to wait and see what they bring out next time around. All their previous camera phones are based around the following formula:

-Big sensor
-High performance optics
-Xenon Flash
-Mechanical shutter
-Proprietary jpeg processing algorithms

All of these things make the phone bulkier, havier, etc. and with the obsession over 4" + screens, it becomes really difficult to have it all without the phone going over 200 grams and 12-14mm of thickness. The capacitors for the 808's xenon flash alone are probably as thick as some modern smartphones...

The 920 is a departure from this "formula", and it introduces something new, which I believe was a side project to compliment PureView pro in a future product, but they pulled it out and made into a separate one. Nothing but a wild guess.

So the 920 doesn't have the "guts" for a great image quality device, all we can hope for is "on par" performance with the iphone 5/gs3 and take advantage of the OIS during video and low light.

Regardless, the fact that it has HAAC mics and OIS makes a much better "camera package" than anything else, and I am sure that the day light performance will be improved over time.

Sorry about the long post.

 

[Gken]

Some of those shots look awful from the Nokia 920 camera.
I love the promise of this phone I just don't think Nokia is really on there A game when it comes to an all around great camera phone though.
Before you all yell at me keep in mind that I preordered one and I hope to be proven wrong but even the photos that the guy in this form posted (the Canadian guy, sorry his name I forgot) are just not that great.
I'm holding out hope that the phone does a lot better with this update that Nokia will release.
However I'm not afraid to take my phone back within a few weeks and get a refund if need be.

Daylight photos will be improved with the update nokia is working on right now. I wouldn't be surprised if it comes out the day of launch or a few days after that.

 

[ColeHarris]

WARNING TECHNICAL INFO BELOW IF YOU?RE EASILY BORED PLEASE ADVERT YOUR EYES!

Regarding the camera I believe, I'm a professional photographer mind you, that the reason we've been seeing less than desirable (even bad) photos in well-lit conditions is down to the shutter speed.

You see the point of OIS is to allow the shutter to stay open longer by stabilizing the lens so that motion blur isn't introduced into the photo, typically when a camera takes a photo the shutter (or iris) opens allowing light to hit the sensor, if the shutter is open to long (low shutter speed) then anything moving during the time the shutter is open will be exposed causing blur or motion blur. With tradition cell phone camera the lens is fixed in one position so unless you put your phone on a tripod there will almost always be a tiny bit of movement from your hands when taking a photo which could potentially introduce blur into the image. To counteract this software usually tells the camera to keep the shutter open for a very small amount of time 1/100 of second is average, this means that there will be an extremely small amount of time for that movement to occur and introduce blur into the photo. This all means a very sharp photo in optimal lighting conditions. However during low light conditions a high shutter speed usually doesn?t allow for enough light to make it into the sensor to create a properly exposed image, this is where Aperture comes in.

Aperture is how wide the iris opens during the time that the photo is taken (f2.0 for example) and if it opens wider more light will be let in meaning a brighter image. Problem is that cell phone cameras are extremely small compared to that of DSLRS or even point and shoots and therefore don't have very large iris's and even their widest aperture (f2.0 for the 920) isn't very wide and doesn't let that much light in. So Nokia has decided to counteract this by decreasing the shutter speed while also increasing aperture when in low light conditions. As mentioned previously this can introduce blur, hence OIS.

OIS stands for Optical Image Stabilization which unlike IS (like in the iPhone) is a physical element that compensates for camera shake by moving the actual camera lens around during photo or video capture, in the case of the 920 this is simply a set of springs but on more expensive lenses this can actually be very advanced motors. So when in low light the 920 is programmed to decrease shutter speed, increase aperture, and allow OIS to jump in and help to decrease movement that could cause blur. This results in excellent night or low light photos as I believe we've seen, but here's the problem. I believe that Nokia's software isn't properly written and is allowing the shutter to stay open too long during well-lit conditions thus introducing blur. OIS isn't perfect and all though it can reduce some motion blur it can't reduce all of it, so in well-lit conditions even with OIS it?s not acceptable to shoot with a low shutter speed. To fix this it?s simply a matter of Nokia tweaking their code to make the 920 choose a higher shutter in well-lit conditions like on a sunny day.

This increase in shutter speed could potentially create a huge increase in sharpness and clarity in the 920?s photos. Assuming I?m right, and I?d like to think I am, it shouldn?t take long for Nokia to create an update that will fix the problem entirely. Now I wouldn?t get your hopes up though, I?m fairly confident that this is the issue but I?m not certain. The other possibility is that the 920 simply doesn?t have a very good camera and there?s no amount of software tweaking that can fix it. However I doubt this is the case as Nokia has shown a strong ability to produce phones with excellent cameras and I have no reason to believe that they?ve taken a step back here.

Anyways sorry for the wall of text, I?ve been toiling on this issue for some time as a result of my own decision making process and felt like sharing my thoughts.

 

[Reflexx]

WARNING TECHNICAL INFO BELOW IF YOU?RE EASILY BORED PLEASE ADVERT YOUR EYES!

Snip...

Thank you for that post. I thought it might be due to the shutter staying open too long, but I don't have anywhere near the expertise to explain it.