Hands On With the Nokia Lumia 1020 227
adeelarshad82 writes "Nokia's new phone, Lumia 1020, feels very similar in the hand to Nokia's Lumia 900 and 920, with one exception: it has a camera bump. The 41-megapixel uber-camera projects out very slightly as a black disc on the back. In terms of functionality, though, the camera provides for smooth zooming only a pinch away. However, it takes a noticeable amount of time to lock focus and save images. At one point during hands-on testing, the camera app crashed so hard that it required a phone reboot, which is hopefully just a pre-release firmware issue. The phone itself carries a brightly colored polycarbonate body that rolls around the edges to cradle a 4.5-inch, 1,280-by-768 screen. Lumia 1020 is powered by a dual-core, 1.5-GHz Qualcomm MSM8960 processor which plows through apps well. Speaking of apps, there's a ton of bloatware on here, as you'd expect from any AT&T device. AT&T adds four apps right at the top of the app list. Nokia Lumia is set to hit AT&T shelves on July 26th for $299."
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
I've seen some of the raw pictures that these high mega-pixel cameraphones take.. blurry shit at the pixel level, making them no better than a much lower resolution camera with better glass.
Re:Why hasn't Nokia crumbled yet? (Score:4, Informative)
Bubble, my ass.Nokia smartphone unit is loss-making since the declared Symbian phones dead and sales collapsed. Source: Nokia quartely earning reports. Exactly up to this point smartphones sales were increasing and the smart devices unit was profitable. They fired a lot of people (and the smart ones left), sold business units, and even their head quarter to stay a float. Other units like NSN are profitable which a helps. As a smartphone vendor the fall from number 1 to 10. And here a nice picture about the colllapse caused by the switch to Windows Phone: http://www.asymco.com/2013/04/18/lumia-is-the-light-visible/ [asymco.com]
Re:41 megapixel of stupidity (Score:5, Informative)
The Bayer filter means only one pixel in 4 is red, so the camera's 8 MP is effectively capturing only 2 MP of red image data, which is less than the 2.8 MP limit I just calculated. The extra "data" bumping it up to 8 MP is "made up" by the Bayer filter processing algorithm. Unless they go with a bigger lens or a wider field of view, the camera simply can't resolve more than about 8-10 subpixels of data (counting each color pixel as separate). Increase the pixel count and you'll just be capturing two blurry pixels instead of one sharp one. You can see this if you compare a cell phone pic with a DSLR pic at 100%. Because more of the data is "made up" by the Bayer algorithm in the cell phone pic, it looks blurrier than the DSLR pic where adjacent subpixels are getting truly different optical data.
I haven't seen specs on the Lumina 1020 optical hardware. But its predecessor the 808 uses a 8.02mm f/2.4 lens, which is 3.34mm across - nearly twice as wide as the iPhone's. It has an angular resolution limit of 0.0146 degrees. Its field of view is a 26mm equivalent, or 69.4x49.6 degrees. That puts its maximum capture resolution at 4737x3386 pixels, or 16 MP. The 41 MP sensor means about 10.2 MP of red data is captured, which again is less than the 16 MP theoretical limit.
In practical use, the "you need a big lens to capture that much resolution" rule only applies to telephotos. In fact the Rayleigh criterion was derived while probing the theoretical resolving limits of telescopes. If you're using a tiny lens, what you give up in angular resolution you can make back with a wide field of view.
But what about optical quality? One of the advantages of using such a small lens is that it's a lot easier to grind it "perfectly". It takes a lot of work and quality control to grind a professional chunk of glass 77mm in diameter within a fraction of a wavelength to the desired shape. It's much easier to grid a 2mm wide lens into the desired shape, and it doesn't cost you much to just chuck it in the trash if it didn't come out perfectly.
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like you want a modern Nokia... but the TRUE Nokia, how it would be now if the Microsoft plant hadn't destroyed the company. So, you want a Jolla. [theverge.com]
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:3, Informative)