Jul 12
Along with the launch of Nokia’s new Lumia 1020
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Jul 11
Visualized: the inside of Nokia Lumia 1020’s six-element, 41-megapixel camera
Posted in: Today's Chili
Optical engineering is something that we take for granted these days, with almost every smartphone packing its very own camera for our convenience. But if you take a look at the delicate structure inside a mobile camera module, you may appreciate the technology more every time you snap a shot. Like this cut-out diagram of the Nokia Lumia 1020’s camera, for instance: you can see how the six lens elements and other tiny parts are tightly packed together above the 41-megapixel sensor. The elements are actually a combination of five plastic lenses plus one glass lens, with the reason being a taller module would’ve been made if all the lenses were made of glass.
And to enable optical image stabilization, ball bearings are used to counteract hand movement — there’s one near the bottom right corner of the above image. Luckily, the module is also designed to withstand normal drops, so neither the bearings nor lenses would fall out of place unless you try really hard. One more shot after the break to compare sensor sizes.
Check out all the news from today’s Nokia event at our hub!
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Nokia
Jul 11
Today’s 41 Million Reasons event was all about the hardware — and, to a lesser extent, proprietary software — so it’s no surprise that third-party app developers weren’t exactly front and center. Nokia did give them a little more time after the show, however, with tables stationed around Lumia 1020 demos. We used the opportunity to take a gander at a beta version of Path’s forthcoming Windows Phone app, which the company was, naturally, showing off on Nokia’s hot new offering. And there’s no question why, really, as this version takes plenty of advantage of the Lumia’s photo focus.
The app also takes some visual cues from Microsoft’s mobile operating system. On the phone’s homescreen, Path’s tile offers a number, cluing you in to how many new posts you’ve got. Fire it up, and you’ll get your feed, as with Android and iOS, including photos, videos, check-ins and the like. Swipe to the right and the app uses the Windows Pivot navigation to take you to tiles with pending friend requests and your existing friends. As for Nokia exclusives, the company’s early access to handset maker’s imaging SDK brings 50 additional filters for pictures.
The app is scheduled for the “coming months”. In the meantime, you can check out a video demo below.
Check out all the news from today’s Nokia event at our hub!
Filed under: Cellphones, Storage, Mobile, Microsoft, Nokia
Jul 11
One of Lumia 1020’s main attractions is its Nokia Pro Camera app, which completes the phone’s 41-megapixel camera with a bunch of handy features. In our video after the break, you can see Niina (not a typo) from Nokia demonstrating the manual focusing and lossless digital zooming. The latter actually works both ways: even if you’ve zoomed in before capture (and still get native 5-megapixel resolution), you can also zoom back out while browsing these photos, as the app captures both the zoomed-in 5-megapixel image as well as the full 38-megapixel image simultaneously. This way you can reframe the image and even focus on a different subject, as CEO Stephen Elop showed us in our earlier interview. But if you don’t need this feature, you can simply set the app to capture just 5-megapixel images by default.
Check out all the news from today’s Nokia event at our hub!
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Nokia
Jul 11
Today we’ve had our first look at the Nokia Lumia 1020 – a device with a 41-megapixel back-facing camera more than ready to take on the already revealed Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom. Where not too many years ago it was considered amazing to see a camera present in a cellphone, here in 2013 we’ve got not just cellphones, but smartphones, bringing on camera constructs far more powerful than most standard pocket-friendly point-and-shoots! Now both Nokia and Samsung have machines with as much focus on the smartphone as on the photography power they possess – so what’s the difference?
Camera
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom works with a 16-megapixel CMOS sensor with an f/3.1-f/6.3 24-240mm 10x zoom lens. This produces results that we’ve just begun to test in our first Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom hands-on with photo examples posted this week. It’s appearing here to be an extremely well-balanced shooter with the ability to take fine photos on its back as well as its front (where a 2 megapixel shooter sits).
Meanwhile the Nokia Lumia 1020 works with a 41-megapixel sensor branded PureView by the company working with an f/2.2 ZEISS lens. The Nokia device works with an up-to 6x digital zoom setup, but claims said zoom will result in no loss of quality due to the machine’s ability to collect so much more image information in the first place.
You’ll have to check out our SlashGear 101: Nokia Lumia 1020 Oversampling and the 5MP “Sweet Spot” until we can get some photo experience with the machine out in the wild. We’re expecting results at least as fine as those produced with the original Nokia 41MP machine, the Nokia 808 PureView.
Size
The physical shape of each of these machines puts the line between camera and phone at a new level of blurry, each in their own way. While the Nokia machine literally has the back-facing lens set in landscape, letting you know that the back side is not a portrait-facing sort of situation, the Samsung device has a similar aim – the Samsung logo may be set in portrait, but the rest of the back is clearly a standard camera and lens looking aesthetic.
The fronts of both machines, too, are set to look like smartphones on their own. The Samsung Galaxy S4′s final size comes in at 125.5 x 63.5 x 15.4 mm while the Nokia Lumia 1020 is thinner – yet taller and wider 130.4 x 71.4 x 10.4 mm in total. NOTE: You’re seeing the Samsung machine here next to the Nokia 808 PureView here, the 808 resting atop the comparably thin Nokia Lumia 1020.
Internal Storage
You’ll need a lot of space for all the photos and video you’re going to be capturing. For the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom you’ve got a rather modest 8GB of space built-in, but you’ve got a microSD card slot capable of working with up to 32GB cards. Meanwhile the Nokia Lumia 1020 works with 32GB of internal storage right out of the box, but has no microSD card slot. It’s a tradeoff or a bonus either way – depending on your perspective!
Operating System
The key factor in deciding between these two machines for you may very well come down to the operating system that backs them up. The Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom works with the newest version of Android, Jelly Bean 4.2.2, while the Nokia machine has Windows Phone 8. Both machines have a rather healthy amount of backup from their respective manufacturers as both machines are heavily invested in the operating systems they roll with, and both work with extremely unique systems under the hood.
While we’ve gotten our first taste of what the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom is working with thanks to our first hands-on on the review bench (as linked above) and through our original Galaxy S4 Zoom hands-on, it’ll be a bit before we get as involved with the 1020 as we want to be before we make any judgements on the Nokia machine. For now you’ll have to take a peek at our first Nokia Lumia 1020 hands-on to see what you make of it!
Nokia Lumia 1020 vs Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom: war of the camera phones is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Jul 11
The Daily Roundup for 07.11.2013
Posted in: Today's Chili
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Jul 11
These are the days in Helsinki when the sun never seems to set. So maybe it’s not so surprising that Stephen Elop, the CEO of the beleaguered Finnish phone giant Nokia, rejects the conventional wisdom that his company is as …
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Jul 11
The Nokia Lumia 1020 is a smartphone with a 41-megapixel camera introduced by the company with intent on having it carried by AT&T here in 2013. This device works with a unique blend of abilities, tending not only to the massive photos produced when it takes 34MP and 38MP photos, but 5 megapixel photos as well. And why would Nokia suggest taking 5 megapixel photos when they’ve got a 41 megapixel sensor on this camera? It’s the sweet spot!
As suggested by Nokia’s own in-depth talks on the subject, the “sweet spot” in 5-megapixels exists for both image quality and for sharing purposes. You can print this size photo up to A3 side with ease and they’re well and above high-quality enough for slapping up on Facebook and Google+. The key with Nokia’s release of the 1020 and the 41MP / 5MP tie in lies in one word: Oversampling.
Oversampling
This is not a brand new concept for the camera industry – it’s not even new to Nokia, if you consider devices like the Nokia 808 PureView – but what’s happening with this device is a rebirth of efforts in the space. We’ll be having a chat on the possibilities of this setup with “lossless” or high-res zooming-in on photos as well, but for now, it’s all about the “amazing detail” Nokia promises in the everyday common 5 megapixel size shot.
The image you’re seeing below is one coming straight from Nokia’s white paper on the subject, suggesting that their technology kicks 5 megapixel photos into gear. With Oversampling – capitalized here so you know it’s Nokia’s unique software attacking the situation, in this article, you’re in for a very obvious different league with clarity.
Nokia suggests that with the technology appearing in the Nokia Lumia 1020, you’ve got a high resolution sensor bringing in one whole heck of a lot more information for images than what’s offered with a “standard” 5 megapixel sensor. That makes sense on a very basic level – you’ve got a more megapixels, so you have a better photo, right? It’s not quite that simple, actually, and it’s not just dependent on the number of megapixels either.
The big difference between a standard 5 megapixel shot and one produced by this new system from Nokia is in the amount of image data spread out across the photo. A standard system – here referring to technology appearing in basically every device in the market through history, especially in smartphones – takes, for example, “5 megapixel” photos but does not work with 5 million pixels of independent data.
Five megapixel photos can look like the image above on the left or the image above on the right, it all depends on how much data is given to each pixel. (Figure 3, that is)
Am I having deja-vu?
This system is extremely similar to what’s been described and implemented by HTC this year with the HTC One. In their case it’s called “UltraPixel” technology, and it’s created a device that’s been held in high regard for its photo capturing abilities, even with what the company calls it’s 4 UltraPixel (or 4 megapixel) camera on its back. Have a peek at our SlashGear 101: HTC UltraPixel Camera Technology post for more information on that alternate vision.
You’ll also be able to find more information on the brand-name PureView from our SlashGear 101: Nokia PureView considering the Nokia 808 PureView as well. Keep it all straight and you’ll do a lot better than the vast majority of lay people in the public – good luck!
SlashGear 101: Nokia Lumia 1020 Oversampling and the 5MP “Sweet Spot” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Jul 11
More interviews? Don’t mind if we do. Nokia’s got plenty to talk about on the Lumia 1020 front, and it also has plenty of people to do the talking. After a sadly brief interview with CEO Stephen Elop, we thankfully got to spend a bit more time with the Matt Rothschild, the company’s head of sales operation for North America. Like Elop before him, Rothschild seemed visibly excited to show off the company’s latest flagship device, locking it into the camera grip in front of him, which was itself screwed into a magnetic Gorilla Pod. “The next time you’re at one of these,” he said with a smile, “you’ll be shooting it on a Lumia.”
As his Australian accent betrays, Rothschild’s done his fair share of traveling, a fact that’s certainly given him a bit of a global perspective on what truly is a global company. We kicked things off by asking the executive how the North American market stacks up to the rest of the globe. Rothschild seems positive on that front, suggesting that, in spite of having stumbled a bit over the past few years (our words, not his, incidentally), Nokia is in a good position to offer an alternative to a smartphone field so dominated by the likes of Samsung and Apple.
Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Mobile, Nokia, AT&T
Jul 11
As expected, the Nokia Lumia 1020 arrived with 41 megapixels in tow at today’s event in New York City. Got questions? Yeah, us too. Thankfully, we had a bit of time to sit down with none other than Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, who was fresh off the on-stage Q&A, wearing a slick pair of bright yellow Converse All-Stars, in honor of the eye-popping color scheme of the handset he showed off earlier today. Elop seemed genuinely excited by his new device (even jokingly correcting me when I called it his “new toy”), taking a picture of us immediately after entering the room — or, rather, he took a picture of our own Richard Lai and zoomed out to reveal me. The concept of re-framing is a huge part of what Nokia’s selling — take a picture first and worry about framing it later. With 41 megapixels, it’s easy enough to zoom in or out after the fact.
Richard brought along a trio of handsets for comparison, including the N8, 808 PureView and the recent Lumia 925, so naturally we started with a little history — much like the press conference itself. Of interest was at precisely what point Nokia began to envision optics as one of, if not the, key focus of its handsets. It was an appropriate visual from Elop’s point of view — the executive sees all of the above as entries in the company’s evolutionary line. Nokia’s focusing on improving the experience a bit with each and every link, says Elop, with the latest handset building atop of the lessons learned. The Lumia 1020 is, naturally, a culmination of those lessons.
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