We where once amazed by Nokia during the launch of PureView 808, a Symbian smartphone that carried the first 41-megapixel camera sensor, which can shoot some amazing snaps. Now again Nokia has come up with its PureView technology on a Windows phone OS with the launch of Lumia 1020, that carries the second generation 41-megapixel sensor and optical image stabilisation (OIS) along with a new Nokia Pro Camera app.
Let’s look into the camera before discussing anything else, the Nokia Lumia 1020 carries the second generation 41 megapixel sensor featuring ZEISS optics with six physical lenses, plus optical image stabilization, delivering crystal clear pictures even in low light conditions. There is a manual shutter option and xenon flash that has power to illuminate shots for the 1/16,000 of a second it takes to capture a shot with the Lumia 1020 at the minimum shutter speed.
The smartphone camera uses oversampling, which packs seven pixels worth of information into one, which result in a high-resolution photo so detailed that user can zoom really far into it and create new sharp and clear images out of the details. With this technology it can allow recording 1080p resolutions video with 4x zoom and 720p resolutions HD videos with 6x zoom without losing the quality.
Along with it the smartphone carries a new Nokia Pro Camera app that makes easier to capture, edit and share photos and videos in a beautiful interface that visually demonstrates how settings will affect the final photo or video. Using the app one can changing settings like exposure level, white balance, shutter speed and film ISO, above all it carries tutorials to help you out. Another feature of the app is that once the user press the camera button it simultaneously takes a full resolution photo of 41 megapixel image, and also a 5 megapixel image, that can be easily shared on social networks.
Nokia has also released a new imaging software development kit (SDK) that provides key image editing features of the Nokia Lumia 1020 to developers.
On the smartphone side Nokia Lumia 1020 spots a 4.5inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 1280 x 768 and powered by 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor with 2GB RAM. It comes in 32GB internet storage and doesn’t have a microSD card slot for external storage. On the connectivity front it got 4G LTE, 3G, GPRS/EDGE, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n , Bluetooth 3.0, USB 2.0 and NFC. It also carries a 1.2 MP front facing camera with an aperture of f/2.4. As usual it runs on the latest Windows Phone 8 operating system along with Nokia’s default apps.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 will arrive first on U.S exclusively with AT&T at a price of $299.99 (INR 18,000) on a two-year contract and will arrive in China and key European markets this quarter.
With this Nokia is taking on Samsung who recently launched the Android based Galaxy Camera and Galaxy S4 Zoom. As always the mobile operating system plays a key part into all this, how good your hardware, an appropriate software always needed to take it full use of it. Let’s wait and see what the customers prefer.