The Nokia Lumia 925, a slimmer, lighter version of the Lumia 920 with better optics in the camera is about to be released very soon. But just how good is the camera? We take a quick look.
The Nokia Lumia 925 is going to be hitting the Indian store shelves very soon, and while it does boast of a slimmer design and a lighter build, word is that Nokia has also tweaked the camera and the lens on the 925. In particular, the Lumia 925’s camera assembly boasts of an additional lens element, which is supposed to improve ghosting and flare suppression, in addition to better sharpness.
We got our hands on a Lumia 925 and in our eagerness, shot off a quick shots with the camera. However, what we did do was take the same shots with our Lumia 920 as well, to see if the additional lens element really did do anything special for the new Lumia.
Take a look at these images, shot side by side with the Nokia Lumia 920 and the Nokia Lumia 925. Our quick assessment is located at the end of the image listing. The images on the left are shot with the Nokia Lumia 920 while the ones on the right have been shot using the Lumia 925. In both cases, the Nokia Pro Cam app was used to shoot the images, with the focussing point being selected manually.
| Nokia Lumia 920 | Nokia Lumia 925 |
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Colours:
Straight off the bat, we can clearly see that the images from the Lumia 920 carry a little more pop than those from the Lumia 925. The images from the Nokia Lumia 925 do look a little less saturated, with lower contrast, but it could just be how the algorithms are written. While many might not like this, and it is possible Nokia could address this through a software update, we feel that the less saturated images leave more room for post processing (increasing saturation and contrast) as against the case of having high saturation and contrast to begin with.
Sharpness:
Right off the bat, we can safely conclude that the sixth element (haha!) does definitely lend to sharpness. In the image that is a close up of the leaf, it is clear that the 920’s optics tend to go soft around the bottom edge, while those of the Lumia 925 show a gradual increase in bokeh. The resolving power of the sensor seems to be at par between both the camera phones, with the Lumia 925 edging out the 920 on the basis of edge clarity alone.
Responsiveness:
The Nokia Camera Pro app allows the user to select a point of focus manually, but doesn’t fire off the shutter like the stock Windows Phone Camera app. This is really great about this app, as it prevents the shooting of out of focus images. When comparing the speed of the two cameras in terms of how fast they respond, we found the Lumia 925 to be somewhat faster. The focussing was at par (though we’re going to have to a lot more extensive testing on this one) with that of the Lumia 920’s, but the shutter response and “recovery time” (the time it takes for the camera to be ready to take another photo after having just fired the shutter) was noticeably lower on the Lumia 925.
Conclusion:
This little test of ours was a rather quick one to see how the two camera phones compare in general shooting conditions. It would look like the Lumia 920 does have better colours, but the lens on the Lumia 925 is most definitely sharper. The camera seems to respond noticeably as well. However, we must point out that this test is just a “quick and dirty” comparison and may not be the final testament on the new phone’s camera performance. We recommend waiting for our full review of the phone to see just how the camera measures up, along with the rest of it.