Nokia bets on photography to boost sales with 41MP Lumia 1020
Nokia on Thursday announced the new, 41-megapixel Lumia 1020, a Windows Phone 8 handset that will try to turn the Finnish phone maker's photography cachet into unit sales.
The new Lumia handset is the spiritual successor to last year's 808 PureView. That Symbian-powered handset also sported a massive camera sensor, and Nokia has long promised that a comparable PureView model would debut in its Lumia line.
The 1020 has a suite of photography options meant to complement its oversized sensor. Chief among these is the Nokia Pro Cam mode, which allows users to make changes to the camera's white balance, ISO, and exposure. In order to ensure that users can share photos easily, the device takes two versions of any particular shot: one in the 41MP resolution and another in 5MP resolution.
The 1020 can also attach to an optional camera grip. This accessory gives the Nokia handset a look closer to that of a traditional camera, but it also packs a shutter button and a battery attachment that plugs into the Lumia's microUSB connector.
Aside from the camera, the 1020 packs a 4.5-inch AMOLED PureMotion HD+ display outputting at 1280x768. Inside, it has the same 1.5GHz dual-core MSM8960 processor that the Lumia 925 and Lumia 920 bore, though the 1020 has 2GB of RAM in order to better process photos.
The new handset ? which will launch on AT&T on July 26 for $300, with the UK's O2 and Three set to get the device in the third quarter ? is Nokia's latest attempt at clawing back market share in the wake of Apple and Samsung's rise. Once the leader in the mobile phone business, Nokia's fortunes took a tumble with the emergence of the iPhone, and the company has since struggled to retain relevance in an increasingly Android and iOS-dominated market.
The new Lumia handset is the spiritual successor to last year's 808 PureView. That Symbian-powered handset also sported a massive camera sensor, and Nokia has long promised that a comparable PureView model would debut in its Lumia line.
The 1020 has a suite of photography options meant to complement its oversized sensor. Chief among these is the Nokia Pro Cam mode, which allows users to make changes to the camera's white balance, ISO, and exposure. In order to ensure that users can share photos easily, the device takes two versions of any particular shot: one in the 41MP resolution and another in 5MP resolution.
The 1020 can also attach to an optional camera grip. This accessory gives the Nokia handset a look closer to that of a traditional camera, but it also packs a shutter button and a battery attachment that plugs into the Lumia's microUSB connector.
Aside from the camera, the 1020 packs a 4.5-inch AMOLED PureMotion HD+ display outputting at 1280x768. Inside, it has the same 1.5GHz dual-core MSM8960 processor that the Lumia 925 and Lumia 920 bore, though the 1020 has 2GB of RAM in order to better process photos.
The new handset ? which will launch on AT&T on July 26 for $300, with the UK's O2 and Three set to get the device in the third quarter ? is Nokia's latest attempt at clawing back market share in the wake of Apple and Samsung's rise. Once the leader in the mobile phone business, Nokia's fortunes took a tumble with the emergence of the iPhone, and the company has since struggled to retain relevance in an increasingly Android and iOS-dominated market.
Comments
Sigh. The more megapixels does not make a better photograph
SOunds great - now make it truly useful by having a 20x Optical zoom lens, ultra-stabilizer app/hardware, medium-light enviro setting, better than 1/250th sec, and the storage capacity to have at least a couple hundred high-res photos -without affecting phone compactness - then it will become more of a sharp-shooter camera than a quick-pic shooter.
I do not really understand the logic of marrying such a camera with an OLED screen that does not render some colors (and especially skin tones) properly though.
You are correct. The pixel spacing on these phone camera sensors became smaller than the point-spread function of the optics a long time ago. (Probably way back at about 3 MP, actually, but I haven't checked the optical specs for a while. There's only so much you can do physically with a small lens and short focal distance. ) So if Nokia adds a bunch more pixels we'll just have a bunch more blurry pixels. Now we have greater zoom levels into the universe of blur and artifact.
But the general consumer will be duped.
Thompson
Quote:
Originally Posted by johnnyb0731
Sigh. The more megapixels does not make a better photograph
Incorrect. It's not the only factor by a mile, but what you say is factually incorrect if all other aspects are identical.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andysol
Incorrect. It's not the only factor by a mile, but what you say is factually incorrect if all other aspects are identical.
As I mentioned to johnny, due to the tiny optics on phone cameras, image resolution is now limited by the optics as opposed to how tightly you can sample the pixels at the focal plane. This has been true for a long time. So if you keep all other factors identical and bump the pixel count up by adding more pixels on the sensor (with tighter spacing) this will not do anything at all to improve image resolution. You just find out that instead of having blurry pixels when you zoom in, you have a bunch more blurry pixels when you zoom in. But when you zoom all the way out, you should see no improvement.
Johnny was correct.
For 4x6 shots, it's overkill. For poster size images, it'll be better but who prints out those?
The phone can hold 5 images at at time. Yay?!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andysol
Incorrect. It's not the only factor by a mile, but what you say is factually incorrect if all other aspects are identical.
That is incorrect. Megapixels has NOTHING to do with the quality of an exposure. What megapixels brings you are two things 1) the ability to print onto larger medias (paper or screen), although most software can do what megapixels can't. 2) the ability to heavily crop an image and maintain reasonable megapixels when printing. That is it. What increasing megapixels will do is increase the size of the file, which on a phone for texting and emailing is a bad thing.
Now the quality of the pixels is a key factor as well as sensor quality and processor and software. And by far the most important is the glass!!!!
Canon's top of the line $6,700 EOS has 18MPs, while their 5D MIII $3,500 EOS has 22MP. So it is safe to say that a $200 phone having 41MP is strictly marketing!
I shot 90% of these with an 8MP EOS and assure you, it will beat out any 41MP phone image.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jungmark
For 4x6 shots, it's overkill. For poster size images, it'll be better but who prints out those?
The phone can hold 5 images at at time. Yay?!
Even for poster-sized images, it won't be better. Even on the iPhone 5, as you blow up the image to print at larger dimensions, you'll see the blur from the optics well before you get to the point where you see the individual pixels. 41 MP with teeny-tiny optics will get you nothing but a larger image file.
Thompson
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Getz
That is incorrect. Megapixels has NOTHING to do with the quality of an exposure. What megapixels brings you are two things 1) the ability to print onto larger medias (paper or screen), although most software can do what megapixels can't. 2) the ability to heavily crop an image and maintain reasonable megapixels when printing. That is it. What increasing megapixels will do is increase the size of the file, which on a phone for texting and emailing is a bad thing.
Now the quality of the pixels is a key factor as well as sensor quality and processor and software. And by far the most important is the glass!!!!
Canon's top of the line $6,700 EOS has 18MPs, while their 5D MIII $3,500 EOS has 22MP. So it is safe to say that a $200 phone having 41MP is strictly marketing!
I shot 90% of these with an 8MP EOS and assure you, it will beat out any 41MP phone image.
I agree....nice point. BTW...very nice pictures on your site! :-)
From what I've seen, it takes amazing photos for a phone. Take a look before whining about mega-pixels.
Quote:
Originally Posted by johnnyb0731
Sigh. The more megapixels does not make a better photograph
Yeah, like they are going to make a better camera than a high end Nikon, Minolta, Canon, Sony or Hasselblad. I think it cool that they can do what they are doing but I wonder how much impact it's going to have on resources. Obviously, the more pixels they capture, the more storage it's going to take, battery life, processing power and it may make the thing unusable.
I used to use a digital camera and it had HORRIBLE battery life. I used to go through batteries so often that I ended up not using the thing and it wasn't that great of a camera to begin with. Battery life on smartphones, especially, is a big deal. Same goes with digital cameras for that matter.
Size of photo file: 400-600 KB
//arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07/in-the-dark-and-on-the-move-with-the-nokia-lumia-1020s-camera/
Quote:
Originally Posted by RichL
From what I've seen, it takes amazing photos for a phone. Take a look before whining about mega-pixels.
I saw them and think they look great too (zoomed out). But on the web page you are really only seeing a very small fraction of the pixels unless you zoom all of the way in. Do so and you'll see the blur from the optics. Stopping at 5 MP was probably sufficient.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ipen
Size of photo file: 400-600 KB
//arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07/in-the-dark-and-on-the-move-with-the-nokia-lumia-1020s-camera/
Just saw the back of the phone. That's a pretty sizable lens housing... so if the optics are high quality, it really might make for a good camera. (Still think 41 MP is overkill though.)
There is absolutely no way that thing has a large enough sensor to support 41 megapixels. They're targeting dummies who simply don't know better. Cramming more pixels onto a sensor only works if you increase the sensor size dramatically. For 41 megapixels, we'd be talking about a sensor the size of what would be in a top of the line full frame DSLR (think $3,000+ price range minimum).
Apparently, we're going back to the old days where people buy based on numbers even when they have no idea what the numbers mean.