Just a few days before its expected launch on Thursday in New York, images from Nokia's 41-megapixel PureView Windows Phone smartphone have leaked — and they're phenomenal. Furthermore, after a slew of case and chassis leaks, and some speculation about the phone's name, the same leak confirms that the 41-megapixel phone will be called the Nokia Lumia 1020.
This information stems from the Flickr account of Joe Belfiore, the manager of Microsoft's Windows Phone division. Hidden amongst hundreds of photos shot with a Sony DSC-RX100, there are two photos taken by a Lumia 1020 — the photo above (view larger), and the photo below (click it to zoom in). Take a moment to appreciate just how awesome the quality of the first photo is. Prior to Belfiore's uploads, it wasn't clear if the phone — code named the Lumia EOS — would be called the Lumia 909 or 1020. It's possible that Belfiore has pulled the wool over our eyes by altering the photo's EXIF data before uploading to Flickr, but highly unlikely.
Ever since the release of the 808 PureView, a stillborn Symbian-powered smartphone that produced stunning photos (below), Nokia has teased us with the eventual release of a Windows Phone with the same 41MP sensor. While the Lumia 1020 will be equipped with a 41-megapixel sensor, it will capture photos using just 31MP when shooting 16:9 photos (7728×4354), or 38MP at 4:3 (7152×5368). Realistically, though, due to prohibitive file sizes, you won't use either of these resolutions: Instead, the Lumia 1020 will come with the option of shooting oversampled images. With oversampling, clusters of pixels are averaged/combined to create a high-fidelity, but lower-resolution (~5MP) images. In the two photos above, their resolutions are only 4- and 5-megapixels respectively — but as you can see, the image quality is far superior to a normal 5MP smartphone camera sensor. For more details on how the Lumia 1020 will oversample, read our original 808 PureView story.
Oversampling is only part of the story, of course — as you can see from the rather sizable bulge in the back of the leaked Lumia 1020 chassis, the sensor itself, and the accompanying Carl Zeiss lens, are big. When it comes to sensors, the size of the individual photosites really does matter. There is a reason that digital cameras with APS-C sensors, such as Canon and Nikon DSLRs, are capable of shooting such high-quality and low-noise photos — and why 35mm (full-frame) DSLRs are even better than that.
There's no word on pricing, but we'd expect the Lumia 1020 to be similar to the Lumia 920 — perhaps with a slightly lower-spec screen or SoC, to keep profit margins high. Alternatively, the 1020 could become Nokia's new flagship, and be priced accordingly — but considering how fat and heavy this thing is likely to be, that's unlikely. The Lumia 1020 will almost certainly come with the same Amber software update that shipped with the Lumia 925 — and using all of those awesome Smart Camera features with a 41-megapixel sensor sounds very exciting indeed.
Now read: How back-illuminated sensors work, and why they're the future of digital photography
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