Perfection: achieved. Next?
I had high hopes for the Black firmware update for the Lumia 1020, with the new oversampling algorithms, and I wasn't disappointed. The gold standard for oversampling is the Nokia 808's hardware processing of the 41MP sensor data and, with this update, the Lumia 1020 matches what the 808 achieves in terms of reducing noise and creating 'purer' pixels. It's true that the software-based approach here is still a lot slower - shot to shot times on the 1020 are still over three seconds - but the important thing is that the 'PureView' vision is fully realised on Windows Phone with this update.
In fact, in terms of image quality, I'd declare the Lumia 1020 with Black to be nigh on 'perfect', and you'd hopefully agree, given the images above? Aside from faster shot to shot times (achieveable perhaps with a 1020 successor in 2014 with four times the chipset speed?), there's almost nothing that can be improved on here.
Of course, having declared the 1020 to be 'perfect', there's the other 99.9% of smartphones (sold) to be considered, most of which fall horribly short when trying such a wide set of test shots as used here. So, across the industry, there's clearly a long, long way to go. But at least we have a new gold standard, a new benchmark.
And, as with the 808 PureView before it, I suspect the only way the Lumia 1020 will now be topped for photo quality will be by the introduction of its own successor.
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