The Nokia Lumia 920 is renowned for its power-packed camera performance and undoubtedly, it has one of the best primary snappers in the business. Since its November 2012 release, the device's 8.7-megapixel primary camera with Carl Zeiss optics has created waves.
On the other hand, HTC's latest flagship — HTC One — boasts the "breakthrough UltraPixel camera." HTC asserts that its flagship's camera "redefines how people capture, relive and share their most precious moments," and HTC Zoe lets users capture high-resolution images.
Recently, Anandtech pitted the HTC One and Lumia 920 against each other in optical image stabilization and low-light performance tests to see which smartphone outperformed the other.
The first test (comparison video below), where both phones were mounted on a bracket, shows that the Lumia 920 outperforms the HTC One as the former's three-axis stabilization and Carl Zeiss optics were significantly superior to the latter's two-axis stabilization and unbranded lens. The Lumia 920 was able to stay more steady, when compared to the HTC One, even when there were aggressive shakes.
"First of all, it goes without saying that the One blows away the devices which only can use EIS when it comes to video stabilization, which means essentially everything besides the Lumia 920. The One does an impressive job damping out the high frequency movement, but doesn't quite match the Lumia 920, which looks so good that you'd think it's on a tripod or steadicam or something. Only the most aggressive of shakes show up in the Lumia 920's output video, while I feel like the One could be a bit more generous with the low frequency shakes. Still, having OIS on an Android device is a huge boon," notes AnandTech.
The second comparison video shows the HTC One routing the Lumia 920 in low light performance, despite the fact that the HTC One's frame rate was well below 30 frames per second. AnandTech avers that at night, the HTC One "really shines," as demonstrated in the side-by-side comparison video with Lumia 920 and iPhone 5.
"Here the benefits in having those bigger pixels pay off. The One is substantially brighter than either of the other two phones. The Lumia 920 prioritizes frame rate and keeps things exactly at 30, which results in the video looking much darker. The iPhone has distracting EIS which runs and results in lights and other point sources looking like they're blurring in all directions while I walk along the path. HTC lets the frame rate slip into the 20s on the One, but looks a heck of a lot brighter. In the final parking garage scene there are a few parts where we can't see anything on the Lumia but can see the scene on the One," reveals AnandTech.
With the scores being one each, it seems, the HTC One packs in some power performance with its much-touted UltraPixel camera as well. Check out the Lumia 920 and HTC One faceoff in low light comparison in the video below.
