Photo shootout: Nokia Lumia 1020, PureView 808, Lumia 925, HTC One, and iPhone 5

If you want to read more about the hardware of the Nokia Lumia 1020 and software loaded on the device, please check out my first impressions article with a gallery of the hardware and some device screenshots.

As you browse through this image gallery you will note there are multiple photos from the Nokia Lumia and 808 PureView because they have different modes and camera utilities. The Lumia 1020 has the default Windows Phone 8 camera app, Nokia Pro Camera, and Nokia Smart Camera. It turns out i grabbed the 5 megapixel images when connected to my Mac. i will have to go find the full resolution 34 megapixel ones and get them up on Flickr. With the 808 PureView I shot in Creative PureView 5 megapixel mode, Creative Full Resolution mode, and Automatic. On the Lumia 925 I used the default WP8 camera utility and the new Nokia Smart Camera utility.

I took photos for this gallery that I would typically take as I walked around the city and will leave the super detailed, scientific analysis of the camera performance up to the real professionals, like Steve Litchfield, who have testing equipment and care about the intimate details. I come at this from a consumer point of view where most are pleased with the performance of the Apple iPhone.

The ZDNet image gallery tool requires me to limit image width to 600 pixels wide. No other editing was done on these photos. If you wish to view, and download, the full resolution images I captured with these various phones then feel free to visit this Flickr image set I put together.

I think it is pretty clear that the Nokia Lumia 1020 confirms its place as the best camera and I was impressed by the improvements I saw over the 808 PureView (better low light/shadow performance, in particular).

I recently posted that the HTC One did a bit better than the Nokia Lumia 925 , but after reviewing these photos in more detail and checking out the images captured in this photo shoot I see that HTC seems to be working too hard with the software and oversharpening the images to make them appear different than reality.

If I was an AT&T customer I would likely jump on a Nokia Lumia 1020, but since I am on T-Mobile I am going to stick with the 925 and look forward to the release of the Pro Camera application. When the next version of the PureView 41 megapixel phone launches with a higher resolution display, larger battery, and support for T-Mobile then I will likely pick it up. Shoot, that could be just in time to use my JUMP! upgrade.