Nokia Lumia 1020 vs. Nokia 808 PureView - Oversampling Comparison

The Nokia Lumia 1020, much like its predecessor the Nokia 808 PureView, uses its large sensor with its high pixel count to capture very detailed pictures. It uses a technology Nokia refers to as pixel oversampling, where information from multiple pixels are pulled onto the sensor  to produce 'perfect' pixels in a lower resolution output image. While both devices essentially do the same thing, they get about doing it in a different way. Let's take a closer look at how it is done. and how the two devices compare



The Nokia 808 Pureview which launched in 2012, comes with a 1.3GHz single core processor and 512MB of RAM. Since isn't powerful enough to handle the oversampling of (up to) 41 megapixel in rear time, Nokia has included a custom imaging chip/sensor from Toshiba and a dedicated Broadcom BCM2763 image processing chip to handle this load. It's a system that worked terrifically well, though was somewhat expensive to have implemented in the first place (in both money and time).

The Nokia Lumia 102 on the other hand has a much more powerful 1.5GHz dual-core processor with 2GB of RAM, which was deemed up to the job of doing the 'oversampling' in software, so in theory ending up cheaper and simpler to build and maintain, but there had to be a few compromises made.

But how does the software-based 'oversampling' on the Lumia 1020 compare with the GPU-based oversampling on the Nokia 808 PureView - is it possible to tell the difference?

The following image was captured in an environment with extremely low ambient light. The consistent colours and clearly drawn outlines are expected to stand out in both images.

The photo, cropped slightly and in slices, taken on the Lumia 1020 with the default Windows Phone Camera application first, then the Nokia Pro Camera application and finally the 808 Pureview

[CONCLUSION] You can use the default Windows Phone Camera application for taking quicker (less than 2s shot to shot in real life) 5MP photos on the Lumia 1020. For events and action settings, you'll still get decent shots (with or without flash).

The next scenario shows the images cropped in more tightly, to 1:1, in order to see what's actually going on. They are arranged in the same order as before

[CONCLUSION] The 'oversampling' used in the Nokia Pro Camera application does have significant benefits in terms of reducing noise and depicting fine details, when compared to the default Windows Phone Camera app. But whats most impressive in the cleanness of the 808 image.

Now moving on to comparing the software oversampling (from 34MP JPG) on the Lumia 1020 with the hardware oversampling (from the raw camera output) on the Nokia 808. Both cameras are equalized in order to get the best comparison between them.

[CONCLUSION] Real time hardware oversampling on the Nokia 808, in terms of the absolute purity of output, is significantly more effective than the software-based used in the 1020.

You can learn more about the comparison and the technology between the Nokia Lumia 1020 and the Nokia 808 PureView by following the source link below.

source - AllAboutWindowsPhone