Hasta La Gadget!

And here she is, in all of her glory. We’ve been hearing plenty about the Lumia 1020 in the lead up to this event, and now, after a proper on-stage unveiling, we’ve finally got our hands on one. Granted, it’s not the eye-popping yellow version Elop showed off on-stage (we got to play with the white and black versions), but it’ll do nicely. As expected, the hardware’s a beauty on this thing. There’s that slick unibody design we’ve come to expect from recent Lumia devices, and in spite of amped up optics, the company hasn’t really done too much to sacrifice weight and profile. On the front is an eye-catching 4.5-inch AMOLED PureMotion HD+ display 1,280 x 768 pixel display, which nicely compliments Windows 8’s bright UI. Nokia’s also promised that the Gorilla Glass 3 display works well with gloves and is still readable in sunlight, but we’ll have to get back to you on both of those.

Remember that thing we said about the slim profile? We’ll there’s one important, but understandable caveat to that. The lens juts out a bit on the back of the thing, so if you try to lay it on that side, it won’t sit flatly — but as Elop said, the back is the new front, so maybe rest it on that shiny display, we guess… About a third of the back side is monopolized by that big lens. Along the top, you’ll see a large flash along with three buttons — one for volume (for that amped up speaker Nokia’s built in), one for power and one, naturally, for the camera. That, after all, is kind of the point here.

Check out all the news from today’s Nokia event at our hub!

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Nokia

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Can 41-megapixels save Nokia? The Nokia Lumia 1020 doesn’t exactly come as a surprise, thanks to the number of leaks we’ve already seen, but that doesn’t make it any less of an engineering achievement. Windows Phone 8 we know, but PureView on the platform is new, and a strong differentiator from anything we’ve seen on iPhone or Android before. Read on for our hands-on first impressions.

From the front, it’s the same Nokia we’re used to. Windows Phone 8′s squared-off UI and bold colors looks great on the 4.5-inch 1280 x 768 AMOLED display, and you’d be forgiven for thinking you were looking at a a Lumia 920 instead. Above the display there’s a front-facing camera with a wide-angle lens, for fitting in more people during each shot.

It’s when you turn the Lumia 1020 around that things get interesting. Nokia has been pushing its phones’ photographic abilities for some time – including a few Windows Phones with PureView branding, like the Lumia 920 and 925 – but this is the biggest sensor ever to show up on a modern smartphone and it makes its presence known.

In the hand, it’s recognizably a Lumia but carrying some extra heft. The PureView sensor – all 41-megapixels of it – isn’t small, and that bulk, not to mention the lenses that go with it, takes its toll on the familiar unibody design. It’s worth noting the improvement over the original Nokia 808 PureView, though: an extra year or so of development has shaved vital millimeters off the camera assembly, and while you’ll notice the Lumia 1020 in your pocket, carrying it day to day would certainly not be an impossibility.

The new Pro Camera app is a considerable improvement over the standard Windows Phone software, since it brings many manual features to the fore. There’s a regular settings page, with control over the dual-shot resolution, what sort of grid you see in the preview screen – such as a square, the “golden ratio”, or rule-of-thirds – and aspect ratio, but there’s also a set of radial sliders that are overlaid onto the preview screen itself.

With them, you can quickly change exposure (including extra-long exposures for light-trace shots), white balance, ISO, shutter speed, and other key settings without having to leave jump between screens. We’ve seen similar on the Samsung Galaxy Camera, but where Samsung’s dials are opaque, and cover the screen, Nokia’s are transparent and so don’t stop you from actually framing an image. Best of all, adjusting the dials shows you in real-time exactly what the impact will be on the final shot.

The clever stuff is how the megapixels are used, however. The Lumia 1020 captures a 5-megapixel oversampled image – combining the data from seven nearby pixels for more accuracy – and a roughly 38-megapixel image for more flexibility in post-processing. That means you can zoom into images you’ve already taken, with the Lumia 1020 using the original image so that the enlargement is lossless. It’s the same in video, with up to 6x lossless zooming possible even during high-definition video recording.

We’ll have to wait until we can spend some serious time with the Lumia 1020 before we can judge the camera properly. Still, just from a brief play with it, it’s clear that Nokia is offering something unique among today’s smartphones. The ability to zoom massively into photos and still get crisp images is incredible, and something that rivals like Samsung are having to fit huge optical zooms – on handsets like the Galaxy S4 Zoom – to achieve similar.

As for whether it makes up for the extra bulk, we’re already leaning toward saying yes. The downside is the price: at $299.99 on a new, two year AT&T agreement it’s expensive (though, as it has 32GB of storage, it’s actually the same price as a comparable iPhone 5, though we doubt most shoppers will see it that way) and, given Windows Phone and, indeed, Nokia, are still very much challengers, that doesn’t seem the best pricing strategy to drum up sales.

We’ll have more on the Nokia Lumia 1020 and the PureView system very soon.

Nokia Lumia 1020 PureView hands-on is written by Vincent Nguyen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Nokia has just announced the new Lumia 1020, which sports a 41-megapixel camera on the back with plenty of bells and whistles. Now, developers will be able to take advantage of the PureView technology in their own apps, thanks to the launch of a new Developers SDK from Nokia that app developers can grab starting today.

The new SDK will give developers the ability to manipulate different camera settings in their apps, and it will provide “key image editing features” of the Nokia Lumia 1020 to developers. Several new apps are coming to the Nokia Lumia 1020 and Windows Phone 8, such as Vyclone, Yelp, Flipboard, Hipstamatic, and CNN.

Nokia ended up doing a short demonstration of the Hipstamatic app on stage, which includes PureView technology thanks to the new SDK from Nokia. The app has the 1020′s hi-resoltuion zoom feature built in, as well as the quality control indicators that help the user take a better photo.

The app also has hundreds of combinations of different filters and lenses that you can choose from, and you can also go into the app and click on the photos in order to share to different social media services like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Developers can actually download and begin using the new SDK today from Nokia’s Developer portal. The SDK is currently in beta, so play at your own risk.

Nokia Lumia 1020 gets Imaging SDK for third-party PureView capabilities is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week the folks at Nokia have gone through not only the basic vision for the Nokia Lumia 1020, but it’s 41 megapixel PureView photography abilities as well. What we’re getting to see here is the machine’s aim to not just take one massive photo each time it shoots, but an array of photos. You’ll be seeing high-energy high-density sharp and bright photos no matter the size you capture: 38 megapixel or 34-megapixel images in 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios, large and small.

This device works with a 41-megapixel backside illuminated sensor the likes of which advance that of the technology found in the original Nokia 808 PureView (a device which also uses a 41-megapixel sensor. This sensor is indeed – as you may have guessed, the largest image sensor in any consumer smartphone at the moment, and the machine comes in black, white, and yellow, as well – have a peek at full details on the device here: Nokia Lumia 1020 PureView official.

Then know this: as you take each photo at its massive 38 or 34-megapixel size, you’ll also be capturing a 5-megapixel photo. This photo will be captured and processed with Nokia’s own Oversampling techniques. This Oversampling process is said by Nokia to be processing 1 billion pixels per second when shooting video, as well.

This machine works with image stabilization the likes of which appeared in the Nokia Lumia 920, 925, 928, and the whole process will be working with “blur free, super high detailed photos day or night.” That’s Nokia’s Elop speaking, and he also promises “2nd generation image stabilization” for this machine while he’s at it – the Nokia Lumia 1020 also works with a new generatiopn in OIS, with a lovely series of ball bearings around this device’s housing.

With six lenses made by ZEISS – you might known it all better as Carl Zeiss, mind you, but the name is ZEISS forevermore. With this setup you’ll be getting digital zoom the likes of which we’ve not seen before.

Zoom in on a shot, take the shot, look at the shot, and zoom out again (even if you’ve taken the shot zoomed in) – the extra image data still persists. This setup also allows “Rich Recording” – aka loud audio recording for when you’re at a massively ear-destroying concert – as well as long exposure modes (for light painting, of course).

This is all done with the machines’ new Pro camera app which we’ll get into deeper soon – stay tuned!

Nokia Pro Camera Zooming:

Nokia Pro Camera Photography:

Nokia Lumia 1020 PureView imaging detailed is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Nokia has officially announced the Nokia Lumia 1020, the company’s latest Windows Phone 8 handset and the first to use a 41-megapixel PureView camera system. Building on the pixel-oversampling technology of the original Nokia 808 PureView, the Lumia 1020 squeezes the camera into a smaller – though still chunky – form-factor, complete with a Xenon flash and new Pro Camera app with more control over manual settings. It’s headed to AT&T later this month, for $300 on-contract.

On the phone side, there’s a 4.5-inch AMOLED HD+ 1280 x 768 display topped with Gorilla Glass 3 and packing a sunlight readability mode for easier outdoor use. Like the Lumia 925 and 920, it also supports gloved use, thanks to a high-sensitivity touchscreen.

inside, there’s a dualcore 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor paired with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. Connectivity includes LTE, HSPA+, and GSM/EDGE, along with WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS, and NFC. The 2,000 mAh battery is non-user-accessible, and there’s no integrated wireless charging; instead, Nokia will offer snap-on wireless charging covers, similar to how it did with the Lumia 925, which can be used to add the ability to the high-resolution smartphone.

It’s the camera we’re most excited about, unsurprisingly, and it’s there where Nokia has put in the most effort. The 41-megapixel sensor uses the same PureView system as the 808 did, clustering data from multiple proximate pixels together and producing normally-sized images with more accurate colors and brightness, and less noise.

There’s also optical image stabilization and a backside-illuminated sensor, Zeiss optics, and a new Pro Camera app which gives greater than usual manual control over settings like exposure, ISO, and more. Above the display there’s a 1.2-megapixel camera with a wide-angle lens.

However, unlike on the 808, the Lumia 1020 is able to simultaneously snap both a low- and a full-resolution image. That gives an instantly-sharable 5-megapixel picture at a cellular-data-reasonable resolution, as well as a full image at around 40-megapixels. With the latter, the Lumia 1020 can offer a lossless digital zoom after the still is taken: effectively, a crop is taken out of the full-resolution shot, with no need to artificially enlarge. Up to a 3x lossless digital zoom is supported.

As for video, the Lumia 1020 is capable of recording 720p HD footage while also offering 6x digital lossless zooming; the Windows Phone can also record 1080p Full HD video, though with less of a zooming range. There’s stereo audio recording, too, with Nokia promising better bass capture than rival phones thanks to its Rich Recording system.

Nokia hasn’t forgotten accessories, either, with the $79 Nokia Camera Grip PD-95G. That has an integrated 1,020 mAh battery, extending the Lumia 1020′s runtime – estimated at 13.3hrs of talktime, 16 days standby, 6.8hrs of video playback, or 63hrs of music – and a two-stage camera key. It also adds a tripod mount for more professional use. Without the case, the Lumia 1020 is 130.4 x 71.4 x 10.4 mm and 158g.

The Nokia Lumia 1020 will go on sale on July 26, priced at $299.99, as an AT&T exclusive in the US. Preorders – for the black, white, and yellow versions – will be offered from July 16.

Nokia Lumia 1020 PureView official: 41MP Windows Phone 8 is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.