The Nokia Lumia 1020 was announced for Australian yesterday, but this morning we got to press Nokia Australia on it’s release. The phone shoots gorgeous 41MP images which can range from 3MB to around 8MB in size depending on the lighting and conditions of the shot.
Everytime you press the shutter the phone actually takes 2 photos, one at the 41MP and another at 5MP that is designed for sharing via social or email. The good news is that you can get at the full resolution 41MP images, the bad news is you have to connect via USB to do it.
The good news for developers is that they can actually build apps that can access the full 41MP images, although currently there aren’t any available. The Nokia SDK available from http://develoeprs.nokia.com allows Windows Phone developers to build applications to manipulate those large images.
You’ll be using every bit of the 2GB of ram and probably a decent chunk of the 32GB of storage. To give users the potential to leave not only their point and shoot at home, but even their DSLR, it’ll be worth it.
Another interesting piece of information around the local launch of the 920 is the colour issue. The Lumia 1020 is available in Yellow, Black and White and Nokia say they make all of them available to all carriers / resellers. This mean that given the option to take all 3, Telstra and Optus both chose to just offer black. You now know where to send your hate mail.
The wireless charging shell was unpriced until today and will sell for $39.95. With the shell snapped to the device, it smooths out the back of the device and the camera bump becomes a non issue. The dedicated camera grip is much larger, but really designed for sometime use, like a holiday. It also houses extra battery power for the 1020.
Also for those people who have complained about the Nokia Pro Cam app not working under the lock screen, they are aware the issue and will work with Microsoft (their new owner) to modify the OS to allow this to occur.
If you’re a 920 owner and in a 24 month contract, you’ll have to discuss upgrade options (and contract break fees) with your carrier or buy the Lumia 1020 outright for $899.
