Hands-on testing of Nokia Lumia 920 shows Nokia didn't need to lie about PureView performance
There are several different teams that work on launch events and unfortunately the marketing folks at Nokia put a serious damper on the engineering highlights of the new Nokia Lumia 920 when it lied about videos and still images that were advertised as being taken by the Lumia 920. They were taken by professional cameras, reportedly as a "demonstration" of what was possible with the Lumia 920. My friend Dieter Bohn at The Verge was able to go out to the New York Central Park site with Nokia and a Lumia 920 to capture photos with the device in an attempt to recreate the still photos taken in low light conditions.
As is clearly shown in The Verge article, the Nokia Lumia 920 does indeed capture solid photos in low light conditions and turns our still images better than any other current high end smartphone (not counting the amazing Nokia 808 PureView of course). They were not able to test out the video image stabilization functionality as this is reportedly not yet ready even in the Lumia 920 prototype Nokia has on hand. It seems that it is not only Microsoft that has lots of work to do on the software before release of Windows Phone 8 devices.
Nokia needs to win big here with these new Windows Phone 8 devices and starting off by deceiving people with their PureView technology is not a good way to start. Nokia issued an apology for the video and another for the still pictures, but it is tough to recover from such a PR disaster. At least Microsoft isn't ready to release Windows Phone 8 anytime soon so Nokia will have at least six weeks to change the discussion and divert attention for this gaffe.
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