It's not just Apple but most of other phone makers can't
Apple might not come up with something like this since they are not Nokia. Actually, none of the handset makers in the world has huge buying powers of Nokia. At least, not yet.
The camera sensor and lens that N8 is using are very special one. If other phone makers is trying to get this kind of camera modules, they are most likely face the supply problem. Being Nokia, they can play and produce with such rare item. If you look other handset makers (not just apple but other big names such as Motorla, LGE, Samsung, Sony Ericson, Panasonic etc. ), None of them can currently ship product based on this kind of special camera module. They just can't since they can't secure the supply at reasonable cost.
Image processing technology is important factor to produce better quality but it's not magic. You can't do only so much without proper HW support.
1/1.9" require pretty big case. I don't know how big N8 is but I am sure they can barely fit the module inside. F2.8 in Mobile phone world is not considered as fast lens. It is very typical. It is more like F5.6 in DSLR world. So I am not sure how much that will help low light performance. Of course, lens is top notch so it will definitely help image quality. Again, this lens is not easily available to many vendors at reasonable cost. It is only for selective few and I don't think Apple achieved that status yet. At this rate, Appple will be in selective group near future but not yet.
Basically, what I am saying is you should not make judgement on Apple based on very special device from one vendor. It's not just apple only but all the handset makers will have hard time to produce 12MP camera which match N8's image quality. The reason is not necessary becasue of they are technologically inferior to Nokia but mostly because of supply chain issue of gettting hold of top notch component.
Also, the final saying on image quality on mobile phone should come from actual user. All these demo pictures are look greate but you should keep that in mind that these are taken by pros. They can take a really good picures with really bad camera.
Some of these shot might be taken from tripod so that they can reduce the hand shake. Knowing that they will take demo image with tripod, they can take advantage of tripod by slowing down the frame rate to increase the exposure, hence, less noise. If same thing happend (i.e frame rate is dropped excessivly) in real life when typical end user hand held the phone, image becomes quite blurry. I don't know they used this kind of technique or setting in these demo images but it's hard to know. All the maketing demo (not just from nokia but from everyone ) only shows image but not how they take these images.
The Nokia N8 uses a sensor that is about NINE TIMES LARGER than the sensor in the iPhone. Again, those of us advocating for a higher pixel count aren't suggesting you keep the sensor size the same. That would be silly.
Nokia have an F2.8 Carl Zeiss Lens and a Xenon flash. Low-light should not be a problem. The fact you've not seen examples of low-light images is not 'curious'. They've not released the phone yet.
The Nokia N8 costs £320 unlocked. The iPhone is £450 locked to a network.
The N8 is 0.6mm thicker than an iPhone 3GS at the camera lens. It's thinner for the rest of the body. Perhaps Nokia are ignoring basic physics.
I don't want to keep banging on about it but Nokia can do it, why can't Apple?
