Image Quality Compared (Studio - Bright Light)

 

Like the outdoor landscape, the Nokia 808 makes easy work of our studio scene under bright daylight-simulated light. Detail resolution is excellent, and the rendering of the finest areas in our studio scene is very natural - in contrast to the more 'digital, crunchier output from some of its peers.

The iPhone 5 does very well too though, and detail capture is impressively high, edge to edge. Less impressive is the grainy look of areas of plain tone, especially the gray card at the center of this scene, which is noisier than the other three cameras in this comparison. To be fair though, in the case of the Samsung Galaxy SIII and the HTC One X, their smoother tones are almost certainly the result of more aggressive noise reduction. This removes a small amount of detail too, which is evident in some of the fabrics scattered around this scene.

The HTC phone gives impressive resolution, but noise reduction and aggressive sharpening have given this scene a 'crunchy' appearance that doesn't look awful, but stands in stark contrast to the much more natural rendering from the Nokia 808 PureView - without doubt the stand-out camera in this selection.