Nokia Lumia 800 Camera Test: Sample Photos Compared

With its sleek design and high-end tech specs, Nokia's new flagship handset with Windows Phone 7.5 could mark the firm's triumphant return to the smartphone market. Ahead of our full review of the Lumia 800, we thought we'd take a look at what the phone's built-in camera was made of.

We've just finished testing the eagerly anticipated Lumia 800 in our camera lab and the results are now available in our camera Face-Off. So is Nokia's new handset up there with the best cameraphones of the moment? How does it shape up against the competition? Let's take a look.

We found the Lumia 800 camera very pleasant to use. It has a fast autofocus and saves pictures quickly. Plus, on the whole, the Lumia 800 camera takes photos that are really quite good quality.

We compared the Lumia 800 with the HTC Titan, Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray and Apple iPhone 4S, which we consider to be the best cameraphones we've tested to date.

Sharpness and Noise: iPhone 4S and HTC Titan still dominate

As with Sony Ericsson's Xperia Ray, we found that photos taken with the Lumia 800 were a touch less sharp than those taken with the iPhone 4S and HTC Titan, which came out more richly detailed.

Compared with the Apple handset, Nokia's new smartphone doesn't handle noise quite as well either, and the test shot taken in low-light conditions was full of coloured pixels. Again, the Xperia Ray behaves in a similar way to the Lumia 800 in this respect.

Colour Fidelity: Xperia Ray on top

Colours in the Nokia Lumia 800 are too cold while colours in the iPhone 4S are a bit too warm. Bang in-between the two, the Xperia Ray gives colours that are more neutral and more accurately rendered.

And the Winner Is?

So how does the Lumia 800 fare against the excellent HTC Titan? Although the Titan did struggle slightly with some of the 'Barbie' test shots, on the whole, HTC's outsized handset still has a better camera than the other three smartphones cited above.

So while all of these mobiles actually have very good cameras, with all criteria taken into account, we'd place the HTC Titan and the Apple iPhone 4S just ahead of the Xperia Ray and the Lumia 800, which offer similar levels of quality.

Note that the Lumia 800 and the Xperia Ray both have wider-angle lenses than Apple's iPhone 4S.

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