NEWS: NOKIA LUMIA 1020

Nokia Lumia 1020

MSRP: $299.00

Review:

You can sum up Nokia's just-unveiled
Lumia 1020 in three words: 41,megapixel, camera!

Teased and leaked to death up to the very last minute before the big reveal, the Lumia 1020's 41-megapixel shooter is what makes Nokia's next marquee Windows phone, and what gives hardware jockeys a reason to salivate.
The Windows Phone 8 device will sell in
the U.S. exclusively at AT&T for a hefty $
299.99 with two-year contract. Preorders
begin July 16, with the Lumia 1020
becoming available online and in stores
July 26. (The Lumia 1020 will also sell
globally.)
It's all about the camera .Make no mistake about it: the Lumia 1020's stunningly enormous image resolution is this smartphone's single killer feature and sole reason for being.
Yep, the 1020 puts the mega back in megapixels.
Here, Nokia pairs an ultralarge camera
sensor with the company's PureView
image-processing software, finally
bringing us the smartphone we hoped the Lumia 920 and its many variants
would be.
Camera geeks looking for the nitty-gritty
will find six-lens Carl Zeiss optics (as in
the recently unveiled Lumia 925), which
also takes on wide angles.
It has high-resolution 3x zoom,autofocus (you can manually focus, too),and a dual-flash system. A smaller LED flash complements the larger Xenon flash
-- a design we saw in Verizon's Lumia 928 -- and the entire shooter captures 1080p HD video at a rate of 30 frames per second.
Ball bearings surrounding the lens
promise image stabilization, which CEO Stephen Elop demonstrated onstage with photos he took on a wobbly boat. We
suspect that ball bearings replaced the
stabilizing springs found in the Lumia
920 to conserve space and keep the camera mount profile as low as possible.
Nokia has also made strides -- and had
successes -- with its low-light photos. In
fact, the Lumia 928's camera has the best
low-light quality of any phone's that I've
seen, with the iPhone 5 a close second in
my photo tests. Nokia aims for even more improved low-light performance from its Lumia 1020.
Nokia's Pro Camera settings boast controls that let shutterbugs and serious photographers easily navigate their
options on the 41-megapixel beast,
including manual exposure settings and
long exposure times. The camera app also includes a tutorial, which sounds helpful for newbies wanting to learn how to use their high-octane phone,though we'll have to wait and see what the phone can teach us.
Couple that with Windows Phone camera apps, called lenses, that layer on
additional settings you won't find in the
native camera app, and you have an
interesting camera story that -- Nokia
hopes -- will run Samsung's 16-
megapixel Galaxy S4 Zoom smartphone
camera into the ground.
We got a chance to try out the Lumia 1020's camera app, which felt lively when fired up, taking photos quickly.
Manipulating the Nokia's graphical camera settings was also intuitive once
we got the hang of it. We did notice that
the phone's fancy Map app took a while
to launch and stuttered a bit when we tried the "Here" augmented-reality
function.
Forty-one megapixels amounts to a lot of
captured information, more than most
people can and will really use, but -- as
with the Symbian-birthed Nokia 808
PureView before it -- the Lumia 1020's
higher megapixel count translates into a
5-megapixel image with lossless
zooming for higher-quality cropped
photos.
In the Lumia 1020, Nokia is extending
this "oversampling" method to video as
well, which could mean some really high-fidelity HD captures when you zoom in. It isn't just about images with Nokia. Audio technology that Nokia calls "rich recording" promises to capture clear,distortion-free sound even in loud
surroundings.
Design and specs
Of course, the matte white, black, or
yellow Lumia 1020 is more than just a
camera. Toss the large, round shooter
module aside and it looks a lot like the
Lumia 920 phones, both in terms of the
squared corners and rounded spines,
and also its guts.
Close up, there are a few differences
between the two handsets. When we got a chance to handle the new Lumia 1020
in the flesh, the phone certainly impressed with its build quality and premium feel. Like its predecessor's, the 1020's chassis is a unibody piece molded
from high-quality polycarbonate. It also
sports similar smoothly rounded edges and a slightly curved back, making it comfortable to hold.