...I think the Lumia 1020 is roughly comparable to the previous generation iPhone (5S) w/r/t photo quality. It has more pixels, but its white balancing doesn’t seem as good to me, the flash isn’t as effective, and in low light situations both perform about equally. In bright daylight, if you take the output from both and heavily edit in Photoshop, you might be able to eke out a better picture from the Nokia phone, but typical pictures are going to mostly be comparable, and in many marginal situations the iPhone 5S pictures will come out a bit better.
I suspect that in most circumstances the iPhone 6 will make similar pictures to the Lumia 1020, better in some conditions and perhaps a bit worse in others. I wouldn’t worry too much about the resolution difference per se: none of these lenses or sensors are actually big enough to resolve 40 megapixels. A 5 megapixel DSLR from a few years ago with a nice fixed 50mm f/1.8 lens at about f/5.6 is still going to get you a noticeably sharper photo than either one – for why, see and and other talks in that series – just search youtube for PhotoTechEDU.
The thing is the 1020 has 4 times the area on its sensor. It doesn't actually record at 41 MP, it downsamples it. But having a 1/1.5" sensor instead of 1/3" is going to make a big difference. As for the flash, the 1020 has a xenon flash instead of LED, making it substantially more powerful and useful.
You can say the white balance is off, but that just refers to the JPEG engine itself, and can be changed later (especially since the 1020 shoots in RAW, IIRC),
That said, the iPhone does take great photos, and is perfectly acceptable in most shooting situations and for most people.
Best != most megapixels. I went and tried out a 6+ and while shaking the phone very aggressively and panning around took several pictures - I was amazed how clear they came out.....
See above, but that really isn't how optical stabilization works. You get, at most, a few degrees of stability. Shaking it aggressively won't really be helped by OIS, but rather by a very fast shutter speed.
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Anyways, back to iOS 8. I'm trying to figure out if I should update my 4S. I seriously regretted putting 7.0 on it as it was absolutely terrible (and not just on the 4S, but on everything). 7.1 addressed the speed issues to an acceptable level, but it took half a year to get there.
I'm wondering how it performs after it's had a chance to index and settle down. Realistically, I should probably wait til a .1 or just avoid it altogether.
I often forget just how fast and snappy iOS 6 is until I use a 4S or 5 with iOS 6 on it... it's so fast. Unfortunately, my muscle memory seems to still be set up for that kind of speed, and 7 is constantly missing taps/swipes because of the animation delays.
I really don't want to burn this thing by putting 8 on it, then finding out it's unbearable and not being able to revert. It's honestly one of the things I despise most about Apple... they don't care if they ruin your devices with one-way, arm-twist updates.
