Want to see how the Nokia Lumia 920 performs in real life? After the firestorm that was the PureView marketing controversy, Nokia decided to reach out to The Verge and prove that the Lumia 920's 8.7-megapixel f/2.0 camera still deserved praise.

So the site took to New York's Central Park to take photos of a Nokia engineer in colorful clothing, leaning against a tree against the backdrop of the city and the nature surrounding her at night. Photos were taken with the 920 (of course), but also the Lumia 900, the Nokia 808 PureView, the Apple iPhone 4S, the HTC One X and the Samsung Galaxy S III.

There are a ton of camera samples that you can see at the source link, but the one above is what we consider the best test. It pairs HTC's and Samsung's flagship Android products, in night mode, against the Lumia 920 in automatic settings. Samsung appears to have the best white balance of the three, but the 920 still comes out on top in terms of brightness and clarity. However, the site noted that because of the longer shutter time at night, the 920 presented some noticeable blurriness — something that could be fixed if they reduced how long the shutter time was (and by extension the amount of light coming into the lens).


The site and Nokia were also generous enough to share an authentic, full-resolution camera sample from the Lumia 920, which we have included above. The Verge has verified this is untouched, as evidenced by the half-baked EXIF data coming from the camera's prototype software. In the end, the site concluded that the PureView camera was worth the hype and that, "Nokia's hardware deserved much better than what Nokia's marketing team did to it". We're inclined to agree.

Check out all of the full resolution camera samples from each smartphone at the source link, and also head on past the break for a behind-the-scenes video documenting how the test was done.

Source: The Verge