Before being an Android user, I was really in Windows Phone. At the time, Nokia was already doing very good things with smartphone cameras, Nokia N8 (which I owned) and 808 Pureview at Nokia Lumia 1020 performing Windows Phone. In 2012, a 41 MP camera was quite wild, and Nokia used the sensor in a way that not commonly seen on a smartphone, making it a big problem.
While I had several Lumia phones (I always have my Lumia 950), I never owned the 1020. So when my friend recently gave me his, I decided that it was the ideal opportunity to do so to see how much the camera has resisted over the years. And as it’s been 12 years since its launch, I decided to compare the Lumia to my current favorite device in Android Imaging, The OnePlus 12.
Comparison of the Lumia 1020 and OnePlus 12
THE Lumia 1020 has only one rear camera, with a total resolution of 41 MP and a total resolution usable of 38 MP. In comparison, the configuration of the OnePlus 12 camera consists of three rear sensors, including a primary sensor of 50 Mp, a 64 MP telephoto lens with a 3X optical zoom and an ultra-related camera of 48 MP.
Although the Lumia 1020 is limited by its unique camera lens, it has a unique way to capture images for the time, allowing users to simultaneously capture a 5MP image and a full resolution 38MP image. Using Pixel Binning, the phone is able to obtain a “loss” zoom while maintaining the 5MP resolution while taking a second full resolution image even during the zoom.
The idea with the Lumia 1020 is that you can zoom in while taking the photo, or you can take the full resolution image and “crop” later to get the same quality essentially. However, apart from having a single sensor, without optical zoom and the possibility of taking ultrairs photos, the Lumia 1020 is limited to around 3x zoom, which is always “without loss”, which means that you will get a 5MP image despite everything.
Meanwhile, the telephoto lens on the OnePlus 12 provides not only an optical zoom at 3X, but can also provide up to 6x of insensur zoom while maintaining the quality of the image.
That said, I decided to maintain the zoom levels at 3x to see how the Lumia 1020 behaved against the dedicated telephoto lens of the OnePlus 12. I also captured both the zoomed 5mp image and the image in full 38MP resolution together.
The results
One thing that deserves to be noted is at first glance, there is not much difference between the 5MP image of Lumia 1020 and the 38MP image when taking non -zoomed images or even when you start again at the same distance from zoom relative to the full resolution shooting. The quality difference would only appear if you zoom in on the 5MP image and the 38MP image afterwards, the latter keeping more quality at 100% zoom.
By comparing the OnePlus 12, what is consistent on each of the photos is that OnePlus manages the lighting conditions much better than the Lumia 1020. This is somehow to predict given the age of this phone, although the Lumia always manages to produce respectable photos in the event of good lighting.
Do not try to take photos at night, because the Lumia camera will suffer, even with the pixel binning and the optical stabilization of the integrated image.
By taking photos, I fought a lot with the response time of the Lumia 1020. The opening of the application of the camera takes approximately 3 to 4 seconds, even when using the dedicated camera button. Not only that, but the capture of a photo can take a few seconds because the camera finds its goal. However, I will sometimes find myself surprised by the way in which the shutter speed is capable of capturing moving objects, despite the work that the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 does to take and process the image.
You can see below how the phone was able to capture the flying birds well, the wings being kept quite the point. The scene itself was a little chaotic, but the two phones were not too progressive by the whole movement. Even some of the best Android phones today would be difficult with all the winging wings (looking at you, Samsung).
How far we came
What I achieved during the Lumia 1020 test is that even if it did impressive things in 2012, cameras technology has traveled a long way in smartphones. Not only are phones now equipped with several goals to achieve things like wider photos or better zoom, but the best Android cameras (and not even so good) often use some of the same techniques that the Lumia even used at the time, only better.
Telephones like the Vivo X200 Pro have brought smartphone photography to impressive heights, which gives us an almost dslr quality and allowing anyone to take impressive photos with a button. The Samsung Galaxy S25 S25, with its camera and camera configuration at 200 MP massive MP, is doing a great job to give users a very versatile and accessible camera system to compete with its nearest competitors like the iPhone.
The Lumia 1020 was a wonder for its time, and I would have loved having one when it was launched. But having one now makes me really appreciate how much we came with smartphone photography.
