Lumia 920 low-light shootout with iPhone 5, HTC One X and Galaxy S III

This one compares it to iPhone 4s, but the difference is day and night here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFhhBJ1URCg

Can you link to the article you took this from? Looks like The Verge, but I couldn't find it.

On the bright side, it also has the best GPS. Too bad it is a smartphone.

The "faked" shots (apart from the image stabilization simulation -- which all of the major camera makers have done in ads at one time or another) were done with actual hardware/firmware prototypes, so although they weren't done with production samples (which didn't exist at the time), they were "real" in the sense that they used the same sensor, processing pipeline and optics as the production camera.

That's the thing. If the camera is anything near what they were claiming, they didn't need to fake the pictures. The reason you fake pictures (or setup unrealistic test conditions) is to make your product look better than it actually is.

But the decided to, reportedly because the software wasn't ready. Not only was the camera actually that good, but they faked it to make a paper launch, where they didn't even announce a release date.

Supposedly, `There is no such thing as bad publicity' [1]. In case of Nokia's recent phones, I agree wholeheartedly -- we wouldn't have heard of Lumia 920 on HN if it wasn't for the faked ad and resulting chatter in the blogosphere.

[1] http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/there-is-no-such-thing-as...

> even though I'm a little skeptical about the choice of OS (have only read about it though).

I'm using WP7 as my primary phone - It's a really good OS. You can try it out in a nearby shop if you have time.

nope, all Lumias are Windows, and this is win8. The first pureview phone/camera with a huge sensor was with Symbian.

Pretty much, unless you use digital zoom (cropping) to get in tighter. It's not so much "automatic vignetting" as it is the result of using a lens that just barely covers the sensor with its image circle -- to avoid vignetting, they'd need to use either a much smaller aperture (and run into diffraction problems) or a much larger and more complex lens that wouldn't fit the phone form factor very well.

The point is to showcase the technical superiority of the camera. Even the worst camera hardware can generally produce good results with adequate light.

The point was a low light test. "Show me light" really kinda ruins the whole experiment. A drow night shot of a city is an accurate portrayal of most of the night shots that will be taken by their target audience, so it makes sense for them to use it here.

Um... You do understand that Engadget isn't on the payroll of Nokia, right? These are not marketing photos. They're photos taken by tech journalists who were visiting Finland, and were given a chance to get some try the camera out. Which is something they'd clearly be delighted to do, since due to the earlier controversy this makes for easy to sell news.

What exactly did you expect Nokia to do? Pass on this opportunity to set the record straight on the controversy from a few weeks ago? Tell them that they're only allowed to publish pictures of something appropriately vibrant and photogenic?

And your complaint about is ridiculous on another level. If you've ever seen actual Nokia marketing photos, e.g. for the N8 or the 808, they tend to be exactly what you asked for. Dramatic, colorful, lively photos from awesome locations all around the world. But such shots from Nokia marketing aren't particularly relevant in this case. First, the authenticity of their photos is questionable right now. Second, such photos aren't a particularly good way of highlighting the unique selling point of low light performance.

> Apple gets it, Nokia does not.

If by "it" you mean customer devotion when faced by evidence that Apple's camera is not technically as good as Nokia's or Apple's maps are not as good as Google's, then I agree. They call it cognitive dissonance.

It's okay to buy or own a product that's not the best at everything. These are just an attempt to show where Nokia's product is strong. I agree with you that Apple's ads are some of the best done, but that is far down on my list of things to consider when buying a phone.