Photos taken with the Nokia Lumia 1020 have been posted online, revealing what it’s capable of, as well as a few of its core camera specs.
Head of the Windows Phone product design team Joe Belfiore posted a couple of pictures taken with the upcoming Nokia Lumia 1020 on his Flickr account, as spotted by The Verge.
They appear to be fairly candid snaps compared with the staged fare usually posted ahead of a phone or camera release, and they uncover some interesting info about the camera-centric phone.
The EXIF data of the shots (now removed) reveals that the Nokia Lumia 1020 lens has an f-stop rating of f/2.2, and the comparison with Belfiore’s other posted photos is telling.
Both the Lumia 620 and Lumia 925 use significantly shorter exposure times, suggesting the Lumia 1020 may use more effective optical image stabilisation than either (the 620 has no optical stabilisation.)
Zooming-in to pixel level in these shots reveals also an impressive lack of grain, and particularly good resolution of detail for a phone camera. Take a closer look –
Original
Pixel-level crop
Original #2
Pixel-level crop one 
Pixel-level crop two
Nokia Lumia 1020 camera specs
The Nokia Lumia 1020 is what many hoped the Lumia 920 would be – a phone that melds the photographic prowess of the 808 PureView with the Windows Phone 8 operating system.
The 808 used Symbian, which was already more-or-less dead at the time of the phone’s release.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 is expected to feature a 41-megapixel oversized sensor that’s several times larger than that of other phones.
It’s likely to have a 1/1.2” sensor, the same size seen in the 808 PureView. This will not only give the Lumia 1020 far better low-light performance than other mobiles, it’ll also let the phone use digital zoom without photo-destroying image quality loss - by 'cropping into' the sensor rather than the image itself.
The aim of the camera is not to take 41-megapixel photos, but to take better 'normal resolution' ones. - the images posted online are not 41 megapixel a piece, but 3.7 megapixels and around five megapixels each.
Both photos use f/2.2, although there has been some suggestion that the Lumia 1020 will have an adjustable aperture. The 808 PureView had a fixed aperture and an f/2.4 lens.
Nokia registered a patent for such a technology in May 2013.
An adjustable aperture would let the camera flit between conditions more effectively, and potentially produce much more impressive depth of field effects.
Nokia Lumia 1020 Release Date
The launch of the Nokia Lumia 1020 has already been set. It will take place on Thursday 11 July in New York.
We’ll be back with all the official info as it’s released.
Next, read our full Lumia 925 review
