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Nokia Lumia 1020: Finally unveiled with a 41-megapixel camera, to boot

Nokia Lumia 1020 runs the Windows Phone 8 operating system. The Nokia Lumia 1020 has one of the nicest smartphone cameras in the game to date. 

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Nokia
The Nokia Lumia 1020 will launch on July 26.
  • By Matthew Shaer

As expected, on Thursday Nokia took the wraps off a new smartphone called the Lumia 1020. 

The Windows Phone 8-powered Lumia 1020 is meant to be Nokia's new flagship phone, and the specs are all top-notch, from the 1.5 GHz dual-core processor to the 4.5-inch AMOLED display. But the feature that's drawn the most interest in the PureView 41-megapixel camera, which Nokia says is capable of taking snaps with resolutions as high as 7712 x 5360. 

"Using a new feature called dual capture, the Nokia Lumia 1020 simultaneously takes a high resolution 38 megapixel image for endless editing opportunities, and creates a 5 megapixel picture that is easy to share to social networks with Windows Phone 8," Nokia reps wrote in a press release.

That pixel count is far above what most smartphone manufacturers are offering today. 

But the Lumia, which will be sold exclusively through AT&T, also packs a pretty sizable price tag: $299, plus a two-year contract. (By comparison, most smartphones retail for around 200 bucks, with a two-year contract.) So will the Lumia sell? Well, over at The Next Web, Harrison Weber isn't so sure. 

"As far as first impressions go, the Lumia 1020 is certainly easy on the eyes, packs an impressive camera, and feels quite sturdy," Weber writes. "Unfortunately, these are the only selling points for the device, which otherwise relies on Windows Phone 8 to stand out in the face of fierce competition from Android OEMs and Apple." 

But over at PCMag.com, Sascha Segan can't help but return to that camera. 

"Zooming with the camera is smooth and lossless – just pinch and drag for up to 5x digital zoom," he writes. "I experimented with the zoom and found that indoors, you need to keep an eye on your shutter speed to prevent things from looking blurry. (That's true with any camera, of course.) All the same, a 5x-zoomed image looked just as good as a 5-megapixel camera phone does without any zooming, which is pretty amazing." 

The Nokia Lumia 1020 will be available in the US beginning on July 26. 

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.

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