Nokia’s 41 megapixel phone coming to Australia

The star of the Nokia line-up is finally coming to local telcos, with the world’s first phone featuring a whopping 41 megapixel camera hitting stores mid this month.

Another model in the Lumia range – yes, it gets confusing – the 1020 will aim to provide something no other manufacturer has done yet, with a 38 megapixel camera operating from a 41 megapixel sensor inside a phone.

That’s more megapixels than most compact and interchangeable cameras have, and is a hell of a lot more than any other currently available smartphone, and Nokia is the one providing it.

The technology originally came about from Nokia’s PureView design which worked on the logic that if you couldn’t put optical zoom inside a flat smartphone, why not make digital zoom useful by cropping from an extra large sensor down to a regular five or eight megapixel image, effectively providing between three and five times the zoom.

That’s an important factor, too, because zoom in cameras has always been flaky digital zoom that blew up the pixels, and was never really useful.

By cropping, Nokia essentially gets around this issue, and makes smartphone camera zooming possible, even if it is through a cheat.

This will arrive in Australia in the Lumia 1020, a smartphone that combines the camera technology with a 4G LTE, WiFi, 2GB RAM, 32GB storage, 2000mAh battery, and Windows Phone 8, all of it sitting underneath a 4.5 inch AMOLED screen with 1280×768 resolution and protected by Corning’s third-generation scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass technology.

“The Lumia 1020 is without doubt the best imaging smartphone on the market today,” said Steve Lewis, Managing Director for Nokia Australia. “We are continuing our commitment to deliver benchmark experiences in photography.”

It’s an interesting release, that’s for sure, and it comes barely two months from when Nokia unveiled its Lumia 925, a lighter and upgraded version of the Lumia 920 which – at the time – Nokia had said was “second to none.”

Obviously it was second to the 1020, which, based on what we now know, was very close behind.

That said, keen customers will be able to find the Lumia 1020 in stores and on plans for a recommended retail price of $899, with plans from Telstra getting it on September 17, while Optus receives from October 1.

A camera grip will also be made available for the Lumia 1020, making it easier to grip and fire shots, priced at $89.95 separately.