Nokia released the Lumia 1020 in 2013, and I thought this 41MP smartphone camera can still outperform many greatest and most expensive smartphones today. I found one at a good price in good condition in used market and brought it out for some street shooting. Based on the images I obtained from the session, the 41MP 2/3-inch image sensor coupled with 26mm F2.2 equivalent lens produced excellent per pixel sharpness and plenty of contrast and details, rendering natural, highly realistic looking images. This camera was launched before the advent of aggressive computational AI software with heavy processing; hence the colors were not oversaturated, and it lacks the over sharpening and crazy noise reduction happening in most newer smartphones that smeared away many useful fine details and contrast. Modern smartphone makers can learn a thing or two from Nokia, the hardware is important, and you can only go so far pushing the imaging boundaries with your software. I cannot help but wonder if Nokia is still around, we would get really interesting and capable smartphone cameras from them today! After all, they were the first to push the sensor size and megapixel count in the smartphone industry. I made a video to talk about this here (click).
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