Nokia today announced what it is calling the “next chapter in smartphone photography,” the Nokia Lumia 1020. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop announced the device today at a Nokia event.
The 1020, like its predecessors, is a Windows Phone 8 device. Also, Nokia is once again betting that smartphone consumers will value great cameras over access to This particular Lumia’s claim to fame is an impressive 41-Megapixel camera. Much of the smartphone’s announcement was spent demonstrating the camera’s capabilities, such as optical image stabilization, 3x zoom, 1080p video, and a “Nokia Pro Camera” mode.
The smartphone’s hardware specs are only a bit improved over Nokia’s current flagship smartphone, the Lumia 920. The 1020 has a 4.5-inch screen with a 1280 x 768 resolution, a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, 2GB of memory, a 2000mAh battery, and 32GB of internal storage.
More than anything, the 1020 seems to be a 920 with a ridiculously nice camera for a smartphone. If nothing else, it may become a competitor device to Samsung’s Galaxy Camera. It does beg the question, though, of why Nokia is so focused on high-quality smartphone cameras. Consumers seem generally happy with the camera quality of Apple’s newer iPhones or high-end Android devices. Professionals will require something even more customizable and powerful than the 1020, meaning a real DSLR. A large enough in-between market almost certainly not exist to push Nokia (and Windows Phone) into real competition with Apple and Samsung. With this much clear, perhaps the camera technology being developed by Nokia says more about where the company is headed in the future than where it really expects the smartphone market to go.