The Nokia Lumia 1020 was announced earlier on Thursday at a New York City Press event. After all is said and done, the biggest take away from the unveiling of the new device is simply the marrying of Nokia's phenomenal 41-megapixel PureView camera technology with a Windows Phone.
The new phone's camera offers high resolution and wobble free imaging even while zoomed in on its 6x zoom in 720p.
As for the phone's specs, it comes with a 4.5-inch AMOLED display, a 2000 mAh battery with wireless charging support. A 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, 2GB RAM, 32GM or internal memory and 7GB free SkyDrive cloud storage.
The Nokia 1020's most impressive feat is its ability to remain sleek despite the attachment of a full 41-megapixel camera. High-end cameras attached to high-end smartphones is nothing new, in fact Samsung's Galaxy S4 Zoom, which debuted last month, has a similar partnership between photography and smartphone productivity. What it does not have is a sleek design. The Lumia 1020 resembles the Lumia 920 in almost every way. The back has a zoom lens that sticks out but not in the most obtrusive of ways. Raised ever so slightly out of the phone's backside is a black circle that contains the LED flash for video, a Xenon flash for photos and the PureView shooter.
"The Nokia Lumia 1020 will be available in yellow, white and black. It will ship first to the USA on AT&T, with sales expected to start on July 26th at $299.99 with a contract," Nokia Conversations wrote on its blog following the event. "It will arrive in China and Western Europe in the third quarter of 2013. Nokia plans to ship an exclusive variant of the device with Telefonica in selected European and Latin American markets. Other markets will be announced shortly."
Below is the recording of the New York City press event's livestream where the new phone was unveiled complete with specs and demonstrations. Tell us what you think, are you excited by the idea of a high-end camera on your smartphone?
