Overnight Nokia announced yet another new phone. The Nokia Lumia 1020 now takes the top spot of best Windows Phone with a crazy second generation of Nokia’s massive 41-megapixel sensor. It features optical image stabilisation (OIS) but that’s expected now. The real star of this phone is that camera, but it does introduce some new things to the hardware like Gorilla Glass 3.
Nokia are playing to their strengths here, their camera technology is now clearly industry leading, there is no other phone in the market that comes close to this quality. If your mind springs to the camera running android, that’s very different beast with a physical lens zoom, whereas the 1020 has a crazy sensor that allows the lens profile to be very thin. Nokia say they’ve reinvented zoom by combining a next-gen 41-megapixel sensor, ZEISS optics with six lenses and OIS. The Lumia 1020 camera zooms into the details of every shot – over-sampling the results – making your photographs sharper and clearer than ever before.
The key feature here is the ability to zoom into detail after taking a photo and it not degrading into a hot pixel mess. With so much image data captured 7712 x 5360 pixels, or around 10MB per photo, you can zoom into detail at a crazy level and not have it distort. This means framing your photos just became a lot less important, just fix it in post with a quick pinch and zoom.
One interesting change on the OS level is that the Nokia Pro Camera app takes over as the default camera app on the Lumia 1020. This stems from Nokia’s close partnership with Microsoft, normally partners can not change default apps on the device.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 will go on sale in the US on July 26th with no Australian release dates confirmed.
Tech Specs
Networks: GSM: 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 1900 MHz, WCDMA: 2100 MHz, 1900 MHz, 850 MHz, 900 MHz, LTE network bands: 1, 3, 7, 20, 8
Display: 4.5” AMOLED WXGA (1280×768), 2.5 D sculpted Corning Gorilla 3 Glass, ClearBlack, high brightness mode, sunlight readability, super sensitive touch
Battery: 2000 mAh battery, wireless charging supported via cover
Processor: 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon
Main camera: PureView 41-megapixel with optical image stabilization, Resolution: 7712 x 5360. Includes Nokia Pro Camera. Xenon flash for still images, LED flash for video
Front facing camera: HD 1.2-megapixel wide angle
Memory: 2GB RAM, 32GB internal memory; 7GB free SkyDrive cloud storage
I/O USB2.0, BT 3.0, NFC with SIM based security, WLAN a/b/g/n, A-GPS and Glonass, 3.5 mm audio connector
Size/weight 130.4 x 71.4 x 10.4mm, Weight: 158g
Check out the launch video below.
You can read more at the Nokia Conversations
