LG KG920 vs. SE K800 vs. Nokia N73: One more photo shootout

Indoors

LG KG920 (full) • Sony Ericsson K800 (full) • Nokia N73 (full) • crops

Indoors, where the light is not that strong, LG KG920 has the chance to use it's larger sensor for a bigger advantage. Indeed its pictures look more like made from a digital camera, than from a phone. The yellow cast is here again, but it's normal in this environment.

What's more interesting in this comparison is the Nokia N73 result - look at the holiday lights. In reality they are white, like on the photos of KG920 and K800. Nokia N73 however shows random colors in the lights. This again makes us think that Nokia N73 lacks a low-pass filter. Color artifacts like these in the small white objects, are usually caused by the lack of such filter.

You can see exactly the same here - these lights are white, Nokia N73 just loves to make the things colorful.

Using the flash

LG advertises the flash in KG920 as "strobe flash", which means that this is not the type of LED flash used in most of the mobiles phones. It's more like the xenon flash in Sony Ericsson K800, so we expected similar performance. Nokia N73 has standard LED flash only, so even on paper it can't compete with the others.

LG KG920 • Sony Ericsson K800 • Nokia N73 • crops

LG KG920 • Sony Ericsson K800 • Nokia N73

The first test was against a white wall from about one meter. Here KG920 shows the best results - the object is well lit and the color of the background is almost uniform.

LG KG920 • Sony Ericsson K800 • Nokia N73

The second test is against a brick wall from about two meters in almost total darkness. For our surprise here the LG KG920 failed miserably. It seems that its flash was not as strong as the one of K800. Moreover KG920 doesn't boost the sensitivity in this situation to compensate for the insufficient light. In this scene even N73 delivers better results than KG920. So, if you want good results with KG920, make sure you shoot from close range.

Performance

Sony Ericsson K800 wins by a small margin here. Nokia N73 is a smartphone and is expected to be slower, but in reality is not much slower than K800 in both focusing and saving times. The auto focus reliability is very high on both 3 megapixel cameras. LG KG920 disappointed us in this aspect. Yes, it should process a lot more data, as it works with larger photos, but the saving time was just too long. The auto focus is not that reliable as in the 3 megapixel photo mobiles and the shutter works somewhat strange - it you full-press from the beginning, you might not be able to take the photo. We should also note that the shot-to-shot time of KG920 is more than 10 seconds.

Conclusion

As we expected, in almost all of the test LG K920 showed better ability to resolve detail than it's 3 megapixel rivals. No surprises here. It also showed amazing macro capabilities and better dynamic range. What stops us from highly recommending it is the really slow performance and the yellowish tint on auto white balance outdoors. As for the Sony Ericsson K800 and Nokia N73 - they are equally good photo devices, but tuned differently. It's just a matter of preference - if you like your photos with more "wow" factor and never plan to edit them later, then your safe bet is Nokia N73. Otherwise, if you want your photos as accurate as possible and preserving as much detail for further editing, then you should go with Sony Ericsson K800.