Of course, all OIS is not necessarily created equal. HTC clearly state, talking about the One, that 'Leading the industry standards, it can counter motion on two axes and operates at an unprecedented frequency of 2000Hz, which means it detects pitch and yaw movements of the camera, and adjusts for those movements, 2000 times a second. This is much faster than any comparable phone camera with OIS.’
As anyone remotely familiar with aviation will know, pitch and yaw are just two ways in which an object (whether an aircraft, or a phone in human hands) can rotate in three dimensions - 'roll' is missing. What HTC fail to say is that their limited OIS implementation, which seems to just use two axis gyroscope data, affects just the angle of one element in the lens assembly in its One camera, and can't cope with roll at all. In contrast, Nokia's holistic approach, using 3-axis gyroscope and accelerometer data and with the whole optical assembly involved, should produce significantly better results.
Time to put this theory to the test. Now, although the HTC One's 'ultrapixel' 4MP sensor and Nokia's higher resolution 8MP sensor present different pros and cons for still images, the actual number of physical pixels should be be irrelevant for video capture, since the physical size of the sensor is similar for each. In other words, the Lumia 920's image processor is presumably combining raw pixel data from the 8MP sensor to come up with the final 1920 x 1080p video frame, so I didn't expect pixel size to be a factor here.
I should say up front that this test was somewhat spur of the moment. I was out and about and had both devices with me, devising a few short subjects, movements and pans, which I tried to reproduce on both phones, sequentially. The intention was not to produce a definitive comparison, but just to give you an idea of the difference between the two OIS systems. I'm hoping to produce something more methodical in due course, in which I'll strap both phones to a rig and then carry the rig, so that each received identical jolts, wobbles, etc. and so that both were shooting the identical subjects. I'd also include a wider range of lighting conditions, to explore performance in low light especially. Watch this space.
In the meantime, here's my somewhat rough and ready comparison. It gives a flavour of what to expect from a more detailed test. As usual with these videos, maximise the playback window and up the quality, if your connection is up to it:
- It's painfully evident how much more competently the OIS in the Nokia Lumia 920 is working to dampen and remove phone movement. The 2-axis OIS in the HTC One is simply not able to cope with 'roll' - the walking tests demonstrate this very well.
- It's also evident how much more usable detail there is in the 920's video in some of the scenes. Remember both units are shooting at the same 1080p, yet the detail, colour and extra stability help give the impression that the Lumia 920 is superior and shooting more detail at every turn.
- The HTC One also struggles in a couple of the scenes with extremes of light. As with some of the still images the phone produces, I get the impression that the company needs to tweak its camera algorithms to reduce the exposure (per frame, in the case of video).
Note that the review HTC One was running the latest firmware, but (as we know from numerous Nokia firmwares) there's always room for improvement. The Lumia 920 has been through several firmware cycles now and (on the video side of things, at least) its video capture is arguably superior to anything else in the phone world right now.
Optical Image Stabilisation is said to be coming (and I've publicly predicted as much) to many manufacturer's flagship smartphones over the next year or so, but as can be seen here, a lot depends on exactly how it is implemented. Hopefully Nokia's all-in approach will be the one copied, though I'm sure HTC's approach is both simpler and cheaper and, as usual, money considerations may triumph in the end, which would be a shame.
In the meantime, Nokia's new Lumia 928 and 925 handsets also have the full OIS camera, so the Lumia 920 is about to have some company at the top of the tree, at least.