Lumia 1020 finally dethroned by Galaxy K Zoom?
Whether you're a fan of Windows Phone or not, if you believe your smartphone has a better camera than the Lumia 1020, you're off your rocker. Yes, it beats the iPhone 5s. Easily. And in so damn many ways.
I'm not a megapixels guy. My first digital camera was one I got as a hand me down from my brother. He was an enthusiast on a budget for a short while and spent the time to find the right camera. At the time it was top of the line, and it was 7.1MP.
By the time he passed it on to me, you could buy a budget point and click camera that had 12+MP and high end devices were beyond that. So naturally, when I had a chance I compared images produced by my once high end 7MP camera against those from a newer, mid range 15MP camera. The images my 3 year old 7MP camera took utterly destroyed those of the newer 15MP camera.
So, lets get some technical stuff out of the way.
Megapixels just refer to the number of pixels the raw data is converted into. In theory, more pixels means a greater potential level of detail. But here is the problem. A 3.1MP image is 2048x1536! That is greater than 1080p. That is greater most likely than the resolution on your monitor. And that is a ludicrously small MP count. And that means, that even at a resolution attainable over a decade ago, you could produce an image with greater detail than you have a monitor that could display it. WTF are you people looking at your images on that you feel the need for anything above a 5-7MP device?
My 7MP camera outperformed the 15MP camera because it had a better lens. It was already well beyond the level of detail that mattered. It was the quality of the data packed into those 7 million pixels that mattered.
Honestly, MP's are camera equivalent of multi-core processors in cell phones. People don't understand the complicated things that make a camera decent just like they have no clue what those 8 cores in their Android phones are actually doing. But they understand that 8 cores is more cores than 4. And they understand that 15MP is more than 7. So, companies race to increase the numbers the sheople read into.
And, just as with multi-core processors, there was once a grain of truth to the hype. Going from 1 core to 2 made a huge difference. It enabled true multi-threading. Going from 2 to 4 made less difference than going from 1 to 2, but was still an improvement generally speaking. Going from 4 to 8 and beyond though sees diminishing returns. The same is true of cameras and their megapixel counts. There was a time when digital cameras produced images in resolutions lower than our viewing devices which resulted in varying degrees of pixilation. Once we hit around the 3MP mark, that stopped being a problem. But improving the resolution allowed images to be cropped and resized to a decent degree before we dropped back down to fewer pixels than fit on a screen.
But, two problems arise as the MP count grows. The greater the detail you enable, the better the lens or conditions you need to accurately capture the data to pack into those pixels. In general the scope of what the cameras are catching isn't increasing, so greater detail needs to be captured in order for those benefits to continue to scale. And this is where camera phones tend to struggle. It turns out, generating ideal conditions for a very detailed photo is INCREDIBLY hard. And on a phone you have little to assist in image stabilization, they can have terrible shitty lens arrays, they rarely support tripods. So this means that by and large, while resolution is improving, the quality packed into those extra pixels isn't keeping pace.
And this brings us back to our question. Yes the Lumia has an insane 41MP resolution. But it also has mad tech packed into the lens to enable a decent quality shot. No, I don't think it truly makes use of 41MP on a regular basis. But it comes as damn close as any camera phone ever has.
The Galaxy K Zoom has the potential to beat out the 1020. Early tests I saw looked terrible. But I imagine that is mostly firmware and software related issues that can be fixed.
So, could it truly beat the 1020? Well, that depends on interpretation I guess. I honestly think that the approach Samsung took has the potential to produce better quality images than the Lumia 1020 despite having a sensor with half the resolution. I also think calling this a camera phone is a technicality.
To explain. The Lumia 1020 is a camera phone in truest sense. The camera protrudes a little more from the body than a typical camera on a phone. But based on reviews, it is not significantly obtrusive even when in use as a camera, the phone remains phone shaped and the camera remains as it is.
The Galaxy K Zoom on the other hand, basically bolts a REAL FUCKING CAMERA LENS right into the damn phone. Basically, where I'm going with this... the Galaxy K Zoom, in my opinion, is NOT a camera phone. It is a camera/phone hybrid, or perhaps the correct category is phone camera, rather than camera phone.
You are either using it as a phone or as a camera, and never both at once. True, that may sound idiotic... but what happens if you get a text or a call while video taping or snapping pictures? Does that massive lens continue to protrude? Does it need to retract and extend every time you switch from text to camera? What if you are switching between taking pictures and IM'ing them to friends or uploading to a sharing site? In the time in between pictures you don't want that massive lens protruding. But you also don't want the lens constantly popping in and out and waiting for that. And you don't want that assembly draining your precious battery life. And you don't want a camera phone that takes even longer to fire up because it needs to open and extend the lens. In my mind, those are reasons why it isn't as stupid a statement as it sounds at first.
You may disagree, or you may agree and not care. Both are valid standpoints.
For me... there are simply too many trade-offs. If the picture quality were sooooo important that I'd be willing to take all of the other negatives... I'd probably be willing to cart along a separate stand alone camera anyway. At which point I could opt for a cheaper phone, and a cheap dedicated camera would probably still produce a higher quality image and come out cheaper than this phone will undoubtedly cost.
I'm sure that there is a niche market this serves. And I'm 100% certain that implemented properly this approach could crush the Lumia 1020. Heck, with this approach, all you need to do is take a top of the line DSLR camera and ram Android and a LTE antenna on it to prove the point. Frankly, that is almost what I feel like they are doing here. They aren't taking a phone and putting a better camera in it. They are taking a camera and putting a phone in it, just so they can finally say they make the best camera phone.
What's next? A 50" phone with 1080p resolution claiming it delivers the best TV watching experience in a smart phone? A phone with 4 foot tall speakers and a subwoofer to deliver the best audio experience?
Anyway, the conclusion is. I don't know. Early pictures, as I mentioned earlier, that I saw from a review unit actually looked worse than the Lumia 1020. But I wager production units will wipe the floor. So, if you don't mind a telescoping lens protruding from the back of your cell phone then I suspect you can count on Samsung. Otherwise, I'd say the Lumia 1020 or iPhone 5s are still your best choices.
I'm not a megapixels guy. My first digital camera was one I got as a hand me down from my brother. He was an enthusiast on a budget for a short while and spent the time to find the right camera. At the time it was top of the line, and it was 7.1MP.
By the time he passed it on to me, you could buy a budget point and click camera that had 12+MP and high end devices were beyond that. So naturally, when I had a chance I compared images produced by my once high end 7MP camera against those from a newer, mid range 15MP camera. The images my 3 year old 7MP camera took utterly destroyed those of the newer 15MP camera.
So, lets get some technical stuff out of the way.
Megapixels just refer to the number of pixels the raw data is converted into. In theory, more pixels means a greater potential level of detail. But here is the problem. A 3.1MP image is 2048x1536! That is greater than 1080p. That is greater most likely than the resolution on your monitor. And that is a ludicrously small MP count. And that means, that even at a resolution attainable over a decade ago, you could produce an image with greater detail than you have a monitor that could display it. WTF are you people looking at your images on that you feel the need for anything above a 5-7MP device?
My 7MP camera outperformed the 15MP camera because it had a better lens. It was already well beyond the level of detail that mattered. It was the quality of the data packed into those 7 million pixels that mattered.
Honestly, MP's are camera equivalent of multi-core processors in cell phones. People don't understand the complicated things that make a camera decent just like they have no clue what those 8 cores in their Android phones are actually doing. But they understand that 8 cores is more cores than 4. And they understand that 15MP is more than 7. So, companies race to increase the numbers the sheople read into.
And, just as with multi-core processors, there was once a grain of truth to the hype. Going from 1 core to 2 made a huge difference. It enabled true multi-threading. Going from 2 to 4 made less difference than going from 1 to 2, but was still an improvement generally speaking. Going from 4 to 8 and beyond though sees diminishing returns. The same is true of cameras and their megapixel counts. There was a time when digital cameras produced images in resolutions lower than our viewing devices which resulted in varying degrees of pixilation. Once we hit around the 3MP mark, that stopped being a problem. But improving the resolution allowed images to be cropped and resized to a decent degree before we dropped back down to fewer pixels than fit on a screen.
But, two problems arise as the MP count grows. The greater the detail you enable, the better the lens or conditions you need to accurately capture the data to pack into those pixels. In general the scope of what the cameras are catching isn't increasing, so greater detail needs to be captured in order for those benefits to continue to scale. And this is where camera phones tend to struggle. It turns out, generating ideal conditions for a very detailed photo is INCREDIBLY hard. And on a phone you have little to assist in image stabilization, they can have terrible shitty lens arrays, they rarely support tripods. So this means that by and large, while resolution is improving, the quality packed into those extra pixels isn't keeping pace.
And this brings us back to our question. Yes the Lumia has an insane 41MP resolution. But it also has mad tech packed into the lens to enable a decent quality shot. No, I don't think it truly makes use of 41MP on a regular basis. But it comes as damn close as any camera phone ever has.
The Galaxy K Zoom has the potential to beat out the 1020. Early tests I saw looked terrible. But I imagine that is mostly firmware and software related issues that can be fixed.
So, could it truly beat the 1020? Well, that depends on interpretation I guess. I honestly think that the approach Samsung took has the potential to produce better quality images than the Lumia 1020 despite having a sensor with half the resolution. I also think calling this a camera phone is a technicality.
To explain. The Lumia 1020 is a camera phone in truest sense. The camera protrudes a little more from the body than a typical camera on a phone. But based on reviews, it is not significantly obtrusive even when in use as a camera, the phone remains phone shaped and the camera remains as it is.
The Galaxy K Zoom on the other hand, basically bolts a REAL FUCKING CAMERA LENS right into the damn phone. Basically, where I'm going with this... the Galaxy K Zoom, in my opinion, is NOT a camera phone. It is a camera/phone hybrid, or perhaps the correct category is phone camera, rather than camera phone.
You are either using it as a phone or as a camera, and never both at once. True, that may sound idiotic... but what happens if you get a text or a call while video taping or snapping pictures? Does that massive lens continue to protrude? Does it need to retract and extend every time you switch from text to camera? What if you are switching between taking pictures and IM'ing them to friends or uploading to a sharing site? In the time in between pictures you don't want that massive lens protruding. But you also don't want the lens constantly popping in and out and waiting for that. And you don't want that assembly draining your precious battery life. And you don't want a camera phone that takes even longer to fire up because it needs to open and extend the lens. In my mind, those are reasons why it isn't as stupid a statement as it sounds at first.
You may disagree, or you may agree and not care. Both are valid standpoints.
For me... there are simply too many trade-offs. If the picture quality were sooooo important that I'd be willing to take all of the other negatives... I'd probably be willing to cart along a separate stand alone camera anyway. At which point I could opt for a cheaper phone, and a cheap dedicated camera would probably still produce a higher quality image and come out cheaper than this phone will undoubtedly cost.
I'm sure that there is a niche market this serves. And I'm 100% certain that implemented properly this approach could crush the Lumia 1020. Heck, with this approach, all you need to do is take a top of the line DSLR camera and ram Android and a LTE antenna on it to prove the point. Frankly, that is almost what I feel like they are doing here. They aren't taking a phone and putting a better camera in it. They are taking a camera and putting a phone in it, just so they can finally say they make the best camera phone.
What's next? A 50" phone with 1080p resolution claiming it delivers the best TV watching experience in a smart phone? A phone with 4 foot tall speakers and a subwoofer to deliver the best audio experience?
Anyway, the conclusion is. I don't know. Early pictures, as I mentioned earlier, that I saw from a review unit actually looked worse than the Lumia 1020. But I wager production units will wipe the floor. So, if you don't mind a telescoping lens protruding from the back of your cell phone then I suspect you can count on Samsung. Otherwise, I'd say the Lumia 1020 or iPhone 5s are still your best choices.
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