A sizeable proportion of prospective purchasers of Nokia's camera champion, the Lumia 1020, will be coming from previous Nokia camera-centric smartphones. The 808 has been featured here previously, but that Symbian device was never given a wide release, whereas its 2010 predecessor, the Nokia N8, was pushed across the world and clocked up many millions of sales. And, with N8s now getting old and battered (like mine), many owners are wondering whether the time is right to 'jump ship' to Windows Phone and whether the Lumia 1020 will match up to their old phone camera. 

From the article on our sister site, All About Symbian:

So a win for the much newer device, though by a comparatively small margin. Don't take the scores too seriously though, since any result here will depend hugely on the choice of subjects and how often (or rarely) I allowed PureView zoom at capture time. I picked the subjects almost at random but tried to include as wide a variety as possible.

The takeaway here is the answer to the question that most Nokia N8 owners have been asking (at least, those who didn't already upgrade to the 808 PureView): "My phone is getting old and battered but I want something with a camera that's as good and yet which is much more modern in terms of OS and ecosystem. Should I be considering the Lumia 1020?"

The answer is a definite 'yes' from me. The narrow victory here doesn't reflect a number of extra camera-related factors which N8 owners will want to also take into account:

• Nokia Pro Camera has more settings to fiddle with and a far more intuitive UI.
• Optical Image Stabilisation helps keep the phone still during capture.
• Terrific OIS-smoothed 1080p video capture.

Provided you're not addicted to Symbian (in which case run, don't walk for one of the remaining 808s!), you can also then add in the ever-expanding Windows Phone ecosystem, a far faster device overall, and a feature set which includes almost everything that N8 owners will have been used to.

Asking me to pick between an 808 and a Lumia 1020 is a very tough call. However, much as I love the venerable old N8, I'd pick the Lumia 1020 in a heartbeat.

You can read the full article here.

The Nokia 808 was a freak device in terms of capabilities (high) and sales.marketing (very low!) but the N8 was a mainstream smartphone, stocked by operators and shops across the world, so this is a very valid comparison indeed. Most N8 owners will have been hanging onto their devices for one reason only, the imaging - not least the (still rare in the phone world) Xenon flash, meaning great shots of kids, family and friends indoors.

In the absence of any other mainstream Android smartphones with Xenon flash, the Lumia 1020 now offers a chance for these millions of N8 users to finally make a jump to a more future-proof OS.