Nokia Lumia 1020

The Nokia Lumia 1020 is a phone with a camera that rivals even the best DSLRs. It houses a 38-megapixel Carl Zeiss lens with 2.7X optical zoom; allowing for lossless cropping to see detail at great distances. For the last decade, Nokia has been famous for it's cameras, and this is the best one they've built. Unfortunately, it's full power is hobbled by Windows Phone 8.1, an OS with a tiny app community, but a vehemently devoted fanbase. And it only has 32GB of storage with no sdcard slot, which will get cramped pretty quickly.

Amazingly, due to the exceptionally low demand for Windows Phones, you can buy a Lumia 1020 for just $150-220 on eBay; which is cheaper than a decent point-and-shoot. The price should drop further upon the release of it's successor.

The Lumia 1020 might just be an inexpensive way to get into the possibilities of smartphone cameras.

Camera Features

• Carl Zeiss Lens
• 38 Megapixel Sensor
• Powerful LED Flash - Much stronger than any weak LED you'd find on a typical smartphone. But you're going to need it; the Lumia 1020 isn't the best in low light.
• Nokia Director - Touchscreen Video Editing software right on your phone. Just avoid uploading to skydrive, which compresses the video...
• 1080p Video Recording
  • Example

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• GSM Arena Review of Multiple Smartphone Cameras

Unique Features of a Smartphone Camera (in general)

Since smartphones have significantly greater processing power and external app support, unlike any other camera, they offer a huge range of possibilities; as a "Smart Camera". Obviously, for the Lumia 1020 you'd have to learn Windows Phone development...

• 1080p Video Recording - The Nokia Lumia 1020 works as an amazing, yet inexpensive camcorder for quick and dirty indie movies, or YouTube videos. And you can do all the video editing on the phone itself with Nokia Director, then upload straight from the smartphone itself.
• Book Scanning - Daniel Reetz's Book Scanner currently uses $90 hacked Canon cameras + a Raspberry Pi, which works well enough. But if the price of the Lumia 1020 drops down to $100, they could scan at massive 40mp resolution, and do all the post processing and book merging on the phone itself!

Other Comparable Nokia Phones

• Lumia 920 - Just as good as a $200 point and shoot.
• Nokia 808