Nokia Lumia 1020 Dials Up the ‘Wow’ Factor

by Michelle Maisto

Nokia has outdone itself with the camera technology in the Lumia 1020. So much so, it’s easy to think of it as a camera first and a phone second. Showing it off in New York July 11, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said, “The back is the new front.”

The Lumia 1020 features a 41-megapixel sensor with six physical lenses and a new application called Nokia Pro Camera. The app enables users to adjust a bevy of settings and, shockingly, even pull back from a zoomed-in photograph.

The Lumia 1020 will come in yellow, black and white—”inherent colors,” said Elop, that will stay true with time and handling. (Elop loosened up a bit, wearing a pair of Converse that matched his new phone.)

Nokia took a series of images, including this one of Manhattan’s Columbus Circle from a helicopter, to show off both the super-crisp images the Lumia 1020 can snap and its incredible zoom capabilities. In another photo, Nokia showed a haystack and then a literal needle in it.

From this image, it’s possible to zoom in tight enough to read the quote on the teabag tag. In a video of bees, it was possible to zoom in enough to see, very clearly, pollen on the bees’ legs. “You’ll see things with this device that you’ve never seen before,” said Elop.

When Nokia first introduced PureView, a marketing effort went sour when it was found to have been shot with professional equipment. Elop made clear throughout the 1020 event that everything being shown was pure Lumia. Elop said he took this photo of a moving boat while in a moving boat in Helsinki, Finland.

The night before the event, the Nokia team took these three photos, using a Samsung Galaxy S 4, an Apple iPhone 5 and the Nokia Lumia 1020, to show the 1020’s prowess at low-light photos using a flash. Only the Nokia is quick enough to catch these jumping engineers in more than a blur.

Nokia also introduced an Imaging software development kit (SDK) that offers developers some of the technology Nokia uses in Smart Camera, Creative Studio and other imaging apps. Hipstamatic, Path, Yelp, CNN and Foursquare are a few of the developers that have already built apps for the Lumia 1020 using the Imaging SDK.

If the back is the new front, the new back is a looker. It features a 4.5-inch super-sensitive AMOLED WXGA with a resolution of 1,280 by 768 and 2.5-D technology. There’s a 1.2-megapixel wide-angle camera, 7GB of free SkyDrive cloud storage and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 operating system.

Elop said Nokia will work harder to train AT&T’s staff about its devices. AT&T will sell the Lumia 1020 for $299.99 with a two-year contract. AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega said Nokia—which he pushed to make the phone thinner—exceeded AT&T’s every expectation with the 1020. Everyone he shows the 1020 to has one word to say about it, he said: “Wow.”